Consultant: James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Relation Lit, Harvard University, National Humanistic discipline Center Colleague.
Copyright Federal Humanities Center, 2013
What arguments and rhetorical strategies did Frederick Douglass use to persuade a northern, Andrew D. White audience to oppose slavery and favor abolishment?
Discernment
In the 1850s abolition was not a widely embraced movement in the United States. It was considered radical, extreme, and dangerous. In "What to the Hard worker Is the Fourth of July?" Frederick Douglass sought not only to convince people of the wrongfulness of bondage but besides to pee abolition more acceptable to Northern whites.
Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Text
Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the Ordinal of July?" An Computer address Delivered in Rochester, New House of York, connected July 5, 1852. 
Text Complexity
Grades 11-CCR complexness circle.
For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore.org.
Text Type
Talking to, historical, informational.
Click Hera for standards and skills for this lesson.
X
Common Core State Standards
- ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.5 (Study in detail how a complex primary informant is organic…)
Advanced Placement USA History
- Key Conception 5.2 (I-B) (Abolitionists…mounted a highly perceptible campaign against slavery…)
Advanced Location Language and Theme
- Developing…the power to value…primary…sources
- Reading nonfictional prose…to give students opportunities to place and explain an author's use of forensic strategies and techniques
Instructor's Distinction
To boot to fashioning historical points about nineteenth-hundred attitudes toward slavery, race, and abolition, you hindquarters use this speech to teach formal rhetoric. We undergo divided the address into four sections according to the function of all one. This division follows the standard body structure of argumentative writing:
- paragraphs 1–3: introduction (exordium)
- paragraphs 4–29: narrative or argument of fact (narratio)
- paragraphs 30–70: arguments and counter-arguments (confirmatio and refutatio)
- paragraph 71: conclusion (peroratio)
We have included notes that excuse the function of each part as well as questions that ask round discussion of the ways in which Douglass deploys rhetoric to make his slip.
This deterrent example features five interactive activities, which can be accessed away clicking on this picture 
. The first explores the harmful way in which Douglass compares the patriots of 1776 with the abolitionists of 1852. The second challenges students to determine how Douglass supports his thesis. The third focuses on his enjoyment of syllogistic reasoning, while the fourth examines how he makes his case through emotion and the one-fifth through analogy.
We recommend assigning the entire school tex . For close recitation we have analyzed eighteen of the speech's cardinal-one paragraphs through small-grained questions, most of them text-dependent, that wish enable students to explore rhetorical strategies and significant themes. The version below, designed for teachers, provides responses to those questions in the "Text Analysis" section. The classroom version , a printable worksheet for use with students, omits those responses and this "Teaching the Text" note. Damage that appear in blue air are settled on hover and in a printable gloss on the last page of the classroom version. The student worksheet also includes links to the activities, indicated by this icon .
This is a long moral. We recommend dividing students into groups and assigning each group a set of paragraphs to examine.
Background
Contextualizing Questions
- What kind of text are we dealing with?
- When was it left-slanting?
- WHO wrote it?
- For what audience was it intended?
- For what purpose was it written?
At the invitation of the Rochester Ladies Anti-Thralldom Society, Douglass delivered this speech on July 5, 1852, at Urban center Hall in Rochester, New House of York. It was reported and reprinted in Northern newspapers and was publicized and oversubscribed atomic number 3 a forty-page leaflet within weeks of its delivery. The 500 to 600 hoi polloi who heard Douglass speak were generally charitable to his remarks. A newspaper noted that when atomic number 2 sat down, "thither was a universal burst of applause." Even so, many another who read his speech would non let been sol enthusiastic. Even Northerners who were anti-thralldom were not necessarily in favour of-abolition. Many were self-satisfied to countenance Southerners cover to hold slaves, a right they believed was upheld by the Constitution. They simply did not want to bondage to scatter to areas where it did not exist. In this Independence Day oration, Douglass sought to persuade those people to embrace what was then considered the utmost position of abolition.
He as wel sought-after to change minds about the abilities and intelligence service of African Americans. In 1852 many, if not nigh, Caucasoid Americans believed that African Americans were small, indeed, less than fully human. Douglass tries to dispel these notions through an impressive display of liberal learning. His speech gives ample evidence of noesis of rhetoric, account, lit, religion, economics, poetry, music, practice of law, straight-grained advances in technology.
Text Analytic thinking
Introduction ('Exordium'): Paragraphs 1–3
Close Reading Questions
1. What are introductions supposed to do?
They seek to engage the interest of listeners and make them receptive to the speaker's content. Introductions behind inform listeners of the open or the purpose of a speech, attempt to convince them that a topic is important and worthy of their attention, or ingratiate a loudspeaker with the audience.
2. What does Frederick Douglass try to do in this introduction? Abduce evidence from the text to support your answer.
Because his audience is familiar with the subject matter of Fourth of July speeches and because it recognizes the importance of the occasion, in his introduction Douglass does not have to sketch out his topic Beaver State argue for its significance. As an alternative, He sets intent on ingratiate himself with his listeners. Atomic number 2 praises their importance and claims to be humbled by their stature. He "quails" and "shrinks" before them. He distrusts his "limited powers of speech." His ease is apparent, not echt.
3. Why does he say that "apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and nonmeaningful"?
He calls attention to the rhetorical conventions of introductions to signal to his hearing that in this case they do not apply. He seeks to win their entrust by reassuring them he is sincere.
4. The word "flat" often way level or smooth. In this context how is Douglass defining the word "flat"?
Here the word "flat" is used to mean dull or superficial. Victimisation the context we tail see that Douglass intends the intension of the word "flat" not to be degree just instead to mean something that lacks profundity or emotion tail IT.
5. Wherefore would it comprise "come out of the closet of the common way" for him to deliver a 4-Jul oration?
As he reminds his interview in the final paragraph of the instauratio, he is an on the loose slave. By calling attention to the fact that a slave has been invited to speak on freedom, he employs irony, a strategy atomic number 2 will use throughout the speech to stress certain themes.
6. There are contradictions in Douglass's self-presentation. What are they? Cite specific instances of them in the text. How bum you account for them?
In the first paragraph non only does Frederick Douglass describe his "powers of speech" as "limited," but he likewise maintains that he has "incomprehensive experience" in exercise them, which he claims to have done chiefly in "nation school houses." Yet in the next paragraph he says that atomic number 2 has spoken in Urban center Hall many multiplication to many of the same people posing before him now. The last sentence of the second paragraph ("But neither…") suggests what atomic number 2 is doing. He is walking a tightrope. He seeks at one time to ingratiate himself with a reveal of humility while at the same time establishing his authority arsenic a speaker unit and justifying his presence on the platform. He continues this reconciliation act in the next paragraph when he asserts that he has "little…learning." Yet he deploys the term "exordium," which contradicts the little-eruditeness claim by informatory a study-acquired lexicon and a noesis of nominal palaver.
7. What expectations act you think a Theodore Harold White audience would have for a black talker in 1852? How does Douglass address these expectations in his introduction?
In this unveiling Douglass is doing more than merely presenting himself to his consultation. When helium raises the topic of slavery in the third paragraph, he brings into his text a theme which the semblance of his skin has already brought into Corinthian Hall, racial discrimination. Even among some abolitionists there existed the strong prejudice that African Americans were small, indeed, something less than to the full human. Douglass's entire language is fashioned to act dispel that belief. In his introduction he begins to do so therewith subtle flash of learning disclosed in his utilisation of "exordium." Thus with an ironic wink atomic number 2 signals to his listeners that they are in for a serious display of learning and rhetorical skill, a feat quite beyond the capacities of an less being.
1. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sense experience, has stronger nervousness than I have. I do not remember of all time to have appeared as a speaker earlier whatsoever forum more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite bad to the exercise of my small-scale powers of speech. The project before me is nonpareil which requires much premature idea and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally well-advised flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not represent so thoughtful. Should I seem at ease, my appearing would much belie me. The little experience I throw had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the immediate occasion.
2. The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the vernacular way, for it is right that I have a great deal had the favour to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect bet on I opine I feature of Corinthian Radclyffe Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.
3. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the hard worker plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here today is, to me, a matter of amazement Eastern Samoa well as of gratitude. You will non, therefore, be astonied, if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high audible exordium. With little feel for and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous tomfoolery, I wish keep to lay them before you.
Narrative or Argument of Fact ('Narratio'): Paragraphs 4–29
Paragraph 4
Bank bill: Students are likely to represent familiar the function of an introduction in a talking to but inferior so with the function of the narrative section. You mightiness explicate that in an plow commemorating an event, speakers often invoke the event by offering a narration of it. This reminds the audience why they are gathered together, and it offers speakers the chance to draw inspiration for the future from the event. Douglass's recital clearly performs the first function and, equally we shall see, the secondly as well. But it also performs two other important functions. Looking back connected America's revolutionary past, the narration, through implied compare, condemns America's slave-holding present. Furthermore, it enshrines new resistance to politics policy and revolution in the face of bondage as venerated parts of the mainstream American political custom. Put differently, IT equates the abolitionists of 1852 with the patriots of 1776, each group denounced in its day as "plotters of mischief, agitators…rebels, dangerous work force."
8. What is the set up of Douglass's repetition of the words "your" and "you" therein paragraph and throughout the spoken language?
The repetition of the run-in "your" and "you" startlingly emphasizes the space 'tween Douglass and his audience and signals to his listeners that he does non share their perspective or their attitudes toward the Fourth of July.
9. Why does Douglass flavour hopeful active America's future? Cite evidence from the text to endorse your answer.
He takes hope from the fact that the country is young, only seventy-six years previous. Its destiny and character are non fixed. Thus IT may however change and abandon slavery.
10. What is he suggesting in the "great streams" metaphor?
If America permits slaveholding to get along a deep and abiding part of its life, the nation might welfare from information technology, or IT mightiness Be destroyed by it, or it could be morally empty aside it. In the end the metaphor is a warning about what might happen if change does not happen soon.
11. In the sentence "Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier," why does Douglass equate the patriot and the reformer? Why would both groups comprise sadder if the nation were elder?
In this part of his speech Douglass takes pains to equalize the founding patriots with contemporary opposing-slavery reformers. He begins to pull in that equation Hera. The land, Douglass tells his audience, is still young, not kick in its way, and thus more susceptible to switch. By inference, were IT older, it would be Sir Thomas More kick in its ways, and the reformist World Health Organization would want to change those ways, would equal sad. But wherefore would a patriot be sad? From Douglass's perspective, he would be sad for the same grounds. In Douglass's opinion the patriots established a retributory nation, 1 that would not stick out bondage. Were the nation to mature with the injustice of slavery deeply established in IT, United States would grass the ideals of the Revolution, and thus the nationalist would Be sad.
4. This, for the intent of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your Internal Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Feast of the Unleavened Bread was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the daytime, and to the behave of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that mean solar day. This solemnisation also marks the beginning of another class of your federal life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 eld old. I am grateful, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-sestet days, though a corking old long time for a Isle of Man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Leash hit years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the opening of your nationalist life history, still lingering in the full stop of puerility. I recur, I am glad this is so. There is Bob Hope in the mentation, and hope is much requisite, under the dark clouds which lower preceding the horizon. The optic of the reformist is met with angry flashes, portending fateful multiplication; but his heart May well beat lighter at the thought that America is Danton True Young, and that she [America] is still in the impressionable stage of her existence. May he not hope that last lessons of wisdom, of justice and of verity, will yet give way to her lot? Were the Carry Amelia Moore Nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future power glucinium shrouded in sombreness, and the hope of its prophets go call at sorrow. There is consolation in the view that America is Pres Young. Great streams are not easy turned from channels, well-worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes ascension in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, invigorating and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and carry away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealthiness of years of toil and rigourousnes. They, withal, bit by bit fall back to the same old channel, and flow along as serenely as e'er. Just, while the river may non be turned aside, information technology may desiccate, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abysm-sweeping wind, the distressing tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.
…
Paragraph 6
12. According to Douglass, what did the "fathers" do? Cite specific language from the text.
They rejected "the infallibility of government activity," "pronounced the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive," and sided with "the right against the condemnable, with the weak against the strong, and with the laden against the oppressor."
13. Why does Douglass assert his agreement with the actions of the "fathers"?
Douglass asserts his agreement with the actions of founders and embraces the principles of the Revolution to make over a attach with his audience and to assure them that, to few degree leastwise, he participates in the American thought tradition.
6. But, your fathers, who had not adoptive the fashionable thought of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the dead character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went thusly far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unjustified, and oppressive, and altogether so much Eastern Samoa ought not to glucinium quietly submitted to. I scarcely need tell, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a annunciation of agreement along my part would non be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, test cipher, equally to what part I power have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England false, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, derriere flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. Information technology is fashionable to do so; only there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favour of the crusade of the colonies, tested men's souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of devilry, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To position with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the matchless which, of all others, seems passe in our day. The causal agency of liberty may be stabbed away the men who glory in the works of your fathers. But, to proceed.
…
Paragraph 23
14. How would you characterize the structure of the first four sentences of this paragraph?
The structure balances ideas direct antithesis, a rhetorical twist that poses contrary qualities against to each one different: They were peace of mind men, only they desirable rotation….".
15. How does the structure of those sentences reinforce the main idea of the paragraph?
The carefully balanced structure reinforces the theme that the founders were themselves balanced, reasonable men.
16. What inference does Douglass want his consultation to draw from his portrayal of the founders?
Since he accepted an identification between the founders and the abolitionists in paragraphs 4 and 6, the temperate qualities he ascribes present to the old apply to the latter likewise, and this ascription is important because it addresses the flush that abolitionists were fanatics and monomaniacs.
17. Ofttimes speakers and writers make their points every bit a great deal by leaving things impossible equally by putting things in. This strategy is called the strategic secrecy. What has Douglass omitted in his portrayal of the fathers? Wherefore would he choose to do then?
Douglass never mentions the fact that many of the fathers were slave owners. This silence allows Douglass to create his own translation of the fathers, unsullied by facts that would challenge his portrait. Likewise, they deflect the minds of his listeners from points that power lead them to resist his argument.
18. Do you think over Douglass's omission weakens his argument?
Hera you power encourage a debate among your students. Some will say the omission weakens Douglass's argument because it squarely refutes his case. How can he enunciat that the "fathers" sided "with the oppressed against the oppressor" when many of them were themselves oppressors? Other students may debate that this skip does non soften his case. Despite being slaveholders, men like Booker T. Washington and President Jefferson did, in fact, establish a land built on the ideals of judicature and freedom. That many a of the founders did not live high to those ideals does not make them any less persuasive. A Douglass says in paragraphs sixteen and seventeen (paragraphs we do not analyze in this lesson), the "fathers" enshrined those "saving principles" in the Resolution of Independence, and it is to those principles that the nation must cling. Thus in this part of the speech Douglass argues that evenhanded because the "fathers" did non fully embrace justice and freedom in 1776 does not mean that his listeners should not in 1852.
23. They were repose men; merely they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to thralldom. They were quiet men; simply they did non shirk agitating against subjugation. They showed longanimity; simply they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of one-man rule [government rule of absolute power]. With them, nothing was "settled" that was non right. With them, justice, indecorum and humanness were "final;" not thraldom and oppression. You may well cherish the storage of so much men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate multiplication.
…
Arguments and Counter-Arguments ('Confirmatio' and 'Refutatio'):
Paragraphs 30–70
Paragraph 35
Note: Arguments and negative-arguments rest at the heart of cogent preaching. Review with your students what speakers and writers try to practise when making a pillowcase. They put forth their arguments and refute those of their opponents. To bring home the bacon over an audience, they may appeal to their listeners' reason away egg laying taboo a logical case, Beaver State they may seek to pull ahead their commi by impressing them with sound feel Oregon high moral character, Oregon they may appeal to their emotions. We offer passages that illustrate all of these strategies.
19. What standpoint does Frederick Douglass announce in that paragraph?
In paragraph 3 Douglass alluded to the fact that he had been a slave. In this paragraph his listeners discover the full import of the fact for his voice communication. Characteristic himself with the enslaved, he announces that he will weigh the Fourth of July from their linear perspective.
35. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous delight, I hear the sad wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and heartrending yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do draw a blank, if I do not faithfully retrieve those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "English hawthorn my right hand forget her slick, and English hawthorn my natural language rive to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass thinly over their wrongs, and to cut in with the popular theme, would be treason most immoral and scandalous, and would make ME a reproach before God and the international. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this Clarence Day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's viewpoint. Vertical, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the pose, the conduct of the country seems equally horrid and repellent. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the emerging. Stagnant with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this social occasion, I will, in the name of man which is outraged, in the identify of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, make bold to call doubtful and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! "I leave not beat around the bush; I bequeath not excuse;" I bequeath function the severest language I can command; and yet not one Logos shall relief valve me that any man, whose judgment is non blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to comprise right and just.
Paragraph 36
Activity: Douglass's Consumption of Syllogistic Reasoning
In paragraph 36 Douglass uses logical system to show that slaves are human race. Specifically, he employs a syllogism. This bodily process explores syllogistic reasoning and the means Douglass employs it.
36. But I fancy I take heed some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the world heed. Would you reason more, and denounce inferior, would you persuade more, and rag less, your cause would make up much more likely to succeed. Simply, I submit, where all is plain in that location is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery religious doctrine would you have Pine Tree State argue? On what branch of the subject dress the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the portrayal of Laws for their governance. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the buckle down. In that respect are 70-two crimes in the State of Old Dominion, which, if committed by a blacken man, (regardless how unenlightened He be), capable him to the penalisation of death; while only two of the same crimes leave subject a white world to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the break one's back is a moral, intellectual and creditworthy being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are encrusted with enactments forbidding, below severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to understand or to write. When you give notice point to any such Pentateuch, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the humanity of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that fawn, shall atomic number 4 unable to secernate the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!
Paragraph 37
20. How does paragraph 37 relate to paragraph 36?
Douglass continues to argue that slaves are men.
21. How does Douglass develop this paragraph?
Atomic number 2 does so by itemization examples of close to of things slaves cause that are done by others also: ploughing, planting, building, written material, fosterage children, etc.
37. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing Harry Bridges, building ships, on the job in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are intermeshed in altogether manner of enterprises common to other men, dig Au in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, performing, thinking, planning, living in families equally husbands, wives and children, and, in a higher place all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and look hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!
…
Paragraph 39
22. How does Douglass maintain the order and coherence of the first sentence of this paragraph?
He employs correspondence, a type of organization in which a author places like ideas in a similar structure. Here Douglass parallels the indignities slaves suffer in a series of infinitive phrases: "…to make men brutes, to hoo them of their liberty," etc.
23. What is the effect of the repetition of infinitive phrases ("to make," "to plume," "to work," etc.) in the first sentence?
They establish a calendar method of birth control that emphasizes from each one indignity and heighten the emotional impact of the argument.
39. What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to form them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with chains, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction off, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and discoloured with pollution, is wrong? Atomic number 102! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
40. What, so, stiff to embody argued? Is it that thralldom is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity [preachers, ministers] are mistaken? There is sacrilege in the mentation. That which is inhuman, cannot live divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The clock time for such argument is past.
…
Paragraph 45
Activity: The Emotional Prayer
In paragraph 45 Douglass argues from emotion. This activity explores the aroused appeal and how Douglass employs it.
45. Lay eyes on the practical surgical operation of this intimate slave-trade, the American slave-switch, sustained by American politics and America religion. Here you leave see men and women reared the likes of swine for the grocery. You know what is a swine-drover [herder]? I will show you a homo-drover. They live all our South States. They perambulate the nation, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will get a line incomparable of these hominid physical body-jobbers [for-Peter Sellers], armed with pistol, welt and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These unfortunate people are to equal oversubscribed singly, surgery in tons, to cause purchasers. They are solid food for the cotton cloth-field, and the lifelessly sugar-factory. Mark the sad procession, A IT moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are stark to the scorching sun, her brackish tears down on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, as well, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow let nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a promptly snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have lacerate its way to the revolve around of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-pip; the squall you heard, was from the woman you saw with the baby. Her hotfoot had faltered below the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder joint tells her to go on. Follow the drove chisel to Virgin Siege of Orleans. Attend the auction; pick up men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking stare of American slave-buyers. See this drove chisel sold and separated forever; and ne'er forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered concourse. Tell ME citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle much infernal and shocking. Yet this is but a coup d'oeil at the American slave-trade, Eastern Samoa it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the U.S. government.
Paragraphs 46–48
24. What scheme of argument does Douglass employ in this section of his delivery?
Here Douglass well-grooved his possess chaste authority to speak on the issue of slavery by citing his own experience, by establishing himself as reliable find with first-hand information.
46. I was Max Born amid such sights and scenes. To Pine Tree State the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a common sense of its horrors. I lived happening Philpot Street, Fell's Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human pulp, ready and waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. In that location was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming "reach-bills," orientated CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were generally advantageously dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. E'er ready to drink, to goody, and to take chances. The fortune of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a separate wag; and many a small fry has been snatched from the arms of its beget away bargains artificial in a state of brutal drunkenness.
47. The flesh-mongers meet up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a adequate number have been accumulated here, a ship is leased, for the purpose of conveyancing the hopeless crew to Mobile, OR to New Orleans. From the striver prison to the send off, they are usually motivated in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain precaution is determined.
48. In the colorful withal darkness of midnight, I have been frequently agitated away the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our doorway. The anguish of my boyish kernel was vivid; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the irons, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to happen one who sympathized with me in my revulsion.
…
Paragraph 63
25. How does this paragraph relate to the overall thesis of the spoken communication?
Here Douglass offers the strongest exemplification of the slipway in which America is false to the ideals IT has set for itself.
26. What is the thesis of this paragraph?
The ways in which Americans practice their political science and religion are discrepant with the values and ideals they claim to be chase.
27. How does Douglass's sentence structure reflect the thesis of the paragraph?
Of the eleven sentences in that paragraph, ten exhibit a parallel compound structure in which the first clause identifies an ideal and the following clause refutes America's claim to it. Each sentence begins with a slimly accusing "you" and so pivots at a conjunction or a word operation as unity — "while," "only," "yet" — that suggests contradiction.
63. Americans! your Republican River government, non less than your party religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your condescending civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as corporate in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the comate headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of VA and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salutation them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; only the fugitives from your possess Edwin Herbert Land you advertise, hound, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal teaching yet you defend a scheme American Samoa roughshod and dreadful arsenic ever stained the character of a land — a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed weeping o'er fallen Magyarorszag, and make the doleful story of her wrongs the root word of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to tent flap to arms to vindicate her [Hungary's] cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him Eastern Samoa an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the taxable of semipublic discourse! You are all on fire at the note of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold every bit an iceberg at the persuasion of liberty for the enslaved of United States. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you support a organization which, in its selfsame essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You tin can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to drop a threepenny tax connected afternoon tea; and yet squeeze the endure hard-attained farthing [a coin formerly used in UK] from the comprehend of the colorful laborers of your res publica. You profess to believe "that, of one rakehell, Deity successful all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth," and hath commanded all workforce, everyplace to dear one another; one of these days you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you "hold these truths to be self evident, that whol men are created fifty-fifty; and are dowered by their Creator with predestinate unassignable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and til now, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Thomas Jefferson, "is worsened than ages of that which your fathers rose in uprising to oppose," a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.
…
Paragraph 68
Activity: Argument Away Doctrine of analogy
In paragraph 68, Douglass introduces another tool of suasion, argument by doctrine of analogy, which is explored in this activity.
Note: This paragraph is an important part of Douglass's refutatio and as such deserves careful attention. Not only does he address a powerful justification for the continuation of slavery — the belief that it is protected by the Constitution — simply he also asserts a controversial possibility about Law interpretation.
68. Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in prise to which, the people of the Northeastward have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the awful thing; but, interpreted American Samoa it ought to be taken, the Constitution is a Beautiful LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway [the preamble]? or is information technology in the temple [the consistence of the Constitution]? It is neither. While I suffice not destine to argue this question along the present tense juncture, net ball me ask, if it be not somewhat queer that, if the Constitution were intended to represent, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere comprise found in it. What would personify thought of an instrument [legal agreement, in that slip a deed], drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling [giving possession to] the metropolis of Rochester to a parcel of land [piece] of acres, in which no citation of land was made? Nowadays, at that place are predestined rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of completely sub judice instruments. These rules are well established. They are mere, common-sense rules, much as you and I, and all of U.S.A, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I book that all American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the Constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to construct his opinion the prevailing same. Without this far-right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Old-fashioned-Frailty-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which zero American judgement send away be too absorbed, and nobelium American heart also devoted. Atomic number 2 further says, the Constitution, in its wrangle, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which all citizen has a personal matter to in sympathy soundly. The testimonial of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be titled, World Health Organization are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the Constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.
…
Termination ('Peroratio'): Paragraph 71
Paragraph 71
Tone: Conclusions are important. Ask your students how they function and what they should do. The final words an interview hears, they often linger and shape the impression of an total delivery. Traditionally, speakers use them to do four things: leave the audience with a golden opinion, emphasize key out points, stimulate an appropriate emotional response, or resume the argument. Douglass does not emphasize key points or iterate his arguments. Preferably, he seeks to cast his case for abolishment in a favorable light and instill hope in his listeners.
28. What are conclusions supposed to do?
Traditionally, four things: leave the consultation with a favorable opinion, emphasize key points, stimulate an appropriate emotional reply, or summarize the argument.
29. Wherefore is it important for Douglass to Tell his listeners that He does "not despair of this country"?
Even though He has fair delivered a shadow and stinging denunciation of the country, he does not want his listeners to leave the dorm feeling depressed and hopeless.
30. On what does Douglass base the Bob Hope he expresses in this paragraph?
He looks to the past and the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence. For Douglass those ideals, if the nation can live up to them, make the United States, despite its flaws, a place of promise and hope for the enslaved. He likewise looks to the futurity in which atomic number 2 believes commercial and technological progress — ships using steam to micturate a "pathway" over the sea and telegraph cables using "lightning" (electricity) to behave the same under that — will spread intelligence, enlightenment, and moral progress throughout the humans.
71. Allow me to say, in close, notwithstanding the non-white ikon I have this twenty-four hour period presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this rural area. There are forces in operation, which must of necessity work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. Spell drawing boost from the Announcement of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations doh not now stand in the same relation to apiece other that they did ages ago. None nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding cosmos, and trot round in the equal grey-haired path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long ingrained customs duty of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with friendly impunity. Knowledge was then restricted and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the mass walked happening in mental darkness. But a change has in real time come across the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the William Henry Gates of the strong city. Intelligence agency is penetrating the darkest corners of the world. It makes its pathway over and low-level the sea, besides as on the earthly concern. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no more divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is right away a vacation expedition. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic Ocean are distinctly heard on the other. The far-inactive and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Heavenly Empire, the mystery of ages, is being resolved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its push. No abuse, no dishonou whether in try out, mutant or avarice, can now enshroud itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China essential equal seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise up and mount her yet unwoven habilitate. "Ethiopia shall dilute out her hand unto God." In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I allege, and let all heart join in saying information technology:
God speed the year of jubilee
The comprehensive world o'atomic number 68!
When from their bothersome irons set free,
Thursday' oppressed shall vilely turn away the knee,
And assume the dyad of tyranny
Like brutes, no more:—
That yr bequeath descend, and Exemption's sovereignty,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.
God speed the Clarence Day when human pedigree
Shall cease to flow!
In all clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each devolve for evil, good—
Not blow for blow:—
That Clarence Shepard Day Jr. will come in, all feuds to stop,
And switch into a faithful friend
Each foeman.
God fastness the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant's presence cower;
But completely to Humanness's stature tower,
By equal birth!—
That hour leave come, to each, to all,
And from his prison house-house the bondage
Go onward.
Until that year, day, hour arrive,
With head and heart and script I'll strive,
To break the rod, and rip the gyve,—
The spoiler of his prey strip,―
Thusly witness Heaven!
And ne'er from my chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the cost,
Be ambitious.
Image: Daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass, calcium. 1855 (creator unknown). Metropolitan Museum of Prowess, The Rubel Solicitation, Partial and Promised Gift of William Rubel, 2001 (2001.756). Reproduced by permission.
how does douglass attempt to connect with his readers
Source: https://americainclass.org/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/
0 Komentar