Frederick Douglass, “What to
the Slave is the Fourth of
July?”
Delivered July 5th, 1852
Corinthian Hall
Rochester, New York
• Rochester Ladies’ Antislavery Society of Rochester
• 500-600 people, 12 1/2 cents each
• FD letter to Gerrit Smith: 2-3 weeks of preparation (cf. opening:
“no elaborate preparation”; “I have been able to throw my
thoughts hastily and imperfectly together”)
• Prayer; reading of the Declaration; speech; “universal burst of
applause”
John W. Blassingame, ed. The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series One. Speeches, Debates,
and Interviews. Vol. 2. 1847-54. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982. 359-88.
Circulation
• Request for publication
in pamphlet form
• 700 “subscriptions” on
the occasion
• Published in Frederick
Douglass’ Paper
(formerly the North
Star), 9 July 1852.
Issue 29, col. D: “The
Celebration at
Corinthian Hall”
The structure of the speech
• Douglass’ headings
–
–
–
–
–
–
[Intro]
The Internal Slave Trade Internal Slavery
Religious Liberty
The Church Responsible
Religion in England and Religion in America
The Constitution
• Three parts (Blight): “three essential rhetorical moves”
– Setting patriotic Americans at ease
– “Bitter critique”
– Ending with hope
Another way to think about structure:
from Cicero, De Oratore (On the Ideal Orator, 1st
century B.C.E.)
• exordium – introduction; exhorts (calls to) people to
attend to the speaker’s presence and themes
• narratio – the story or historical context for the issue
under discussion
• confirmatio – the case being made: what is argued
• refutatio – refuting counter arguments: what do people
say against the position and how are they wrong
• peroration – the “outside” of the oration: the conclusion
Ethos, structure, irony
• Caleb Bingham’s Columbian Orator (1797): rhetorical
instruction focused on delivery, not “disposition”
(organization)
• Douglass would have learned inductively: by reading
examples
• Douglass refers to but inverts or treats ironically almost
every structural element of the classical oration
• [irony: incongruity or discordance between what is
expected and the state of things]
• This inversion of expectations contributes to the central
irony of his situation as speaker: “why am I called upon to
speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do
with your national independence?” (155).
• Irony rather than argument: “At a time like this, scorching
irony, not convincing argument is needed” (158).
Exordium (¶ 1-3):
• Douglass: I won’t “grace my
speech with any high
sounding exordium” (148).
• Little learning
• Modesty trope - a
conventions
• BUT consider the rhetorical
questions: Who speaks? To
whom? (slavery, race, class)
• Distance: “between this
platform and the slave
plantation, from which I
escaped” (148)
Narratio: the story, historical context (¶4-31; 149-56)
• Occasion, exigence (situation): what calls forth the rhetorical
act? What genre is required?
– 4th of July celebration: epideictic (ceremonial, occasional)
– Slavery: abolitionist advocacy (deliberative, toward changes
in policy)
• Time: past, present, and future
– The childhood of the Republic of America - hope,
consolation: “Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might
be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier” (149). MLK, Jr.,
“I Have Dream” August 1963: “the tranquilizing drug of
gradualism”
– Geological time: analogy of nation to river
– A “simple story” -- well-known: “as a people, Americans are
remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own
favor: a national trait, a national weakness” (154)
A way of viewing time becomes an argument: the time
of ceremony is redefined: from static principles and
“simple story” to precarious chain of destiny
• Narratio as argument
• “Just here . . . Was a startling idea born” (151): the
novel, inaugural quality of the Declaration
• An uncompleted project: “The 4th of July is the first
great fact in your nation’s history--the very ring-bolt in
the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny” (152).
• “The Declaration of Independence is the Ring-Bolt to
the chain of your nation’s destiny . . . Stand by those
principles” (152)
• “That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost”
(152). The ship of state imperiled: crisis
Ethos, time, and the founding fathers
• The most obvious feature of Douglass’ ethos is dis-identification
with “Americans”: “your National Independence” (149)
• My thesis: Despite the many overt moves to differentiate
himself from the audience--to create distance--Douglass forges
identification with the founding fathers and his abolitionist
audience by emphasizing the courageous character of American
revolutionaries in the moment. He seeks to persuade the
listeners to accept his chronology and take responsibility for
realizing in their own moment the uncompleted project launched
by the Declaration by acting against slavery.
• “To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against
the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! Here
lies the merit” (150).
Standpoint - distance reconsidered
“The point from which I am compelled to
view them . . .” (152)
Distance creates authority: D. moves from “living
evidence” (supplicant, informant) in the Narrative to
instructor on fidelity to the principles of the
Declaration: “stand by those principles . . . At
whatever cost” (152)
And yet, “I will unite with you to honor their memory”
(152): an oscillation between division and
identification
Identification through style
• A scene “simple, dignified, and sublime” (152(
• “They were peace men . . .”: antithesis
• “Their statesmanship looked beyond the
passing moment, and stretched away in
strength into the distant future” (153).
• The national superstructure rising in grandeur
around you: “Fully appreciating . . ., firmly
believing . . .” (153)
Competing visions: the static edifice vs.
the storm-tossed ship of state
• “ My business is with the present . . . the
ever-living now” “Now is the time, the
important time” “ You must live and must die,
and you must do your work” (¶29, 154).
• Washington’s monument built “by the price of
human blood,” yet Washington “broke the
chains” of his slaves (155).
• Enlightenment principles performed rather
than asserted
Sharp reminders of distance/division
Genealogical (154)
Legal/civic (155)
• “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine” (156)
“to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple
of liberty . . . sere sacrilegious irony” (156)
• Why I am called upon to speak? “By the rivers of Babylon . . .”
(156) -- Psalms 137: 1-6: the captive forced to sing
• Douglass’s performance is not a command performance of the
captive but an act of political freedom in the moment; an act of
inauguration.
Confirmatio merged with narratio and refutatio:
epideictic speech becomes deliberative, but argument
(properly speaking) is “reversed” or denied
• “My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I
shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the
slave’s point of view.” (156)
• “America is false to the past . . . present . . . and future” (¶32;
156).
• “But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say . . . argue
more, denounce less; persuade more, rebuke less . . .” (157)
• “Where all is plain there is nothing to be argued.”
– My thesis continued: Douglass declines to make an
argument. He can do so because of his identification with an
abolitionist audience. The fact that he proceeds to make
arguments contributes to the ironic quality of the speech.
What does not need to be argued:
• 1. The slave is a man: legal evidence
“We” are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of
mechanical tools . . .
Douglass’s identification (1st person plural) with “the negro
race”; the rhetoric of the list (157)
• 2. The slave owns his/her body -- “natural right to freedom”
does not need the devices of argument (158): “There is not a
man [sic] beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know
that slavery is wrong for him” (158).
Confirmatio2
• 1. Internal slave trade
“Behold” - enargeia: bringing vividly before the
eyes; human as animal (horse, sheep, swine)
Douglass’ narrative: Why here? How different
from the autobiography?
• 2. Fugitive Slave Law (162); “religious liberty” - the
fusion of religious and civic identities
The law as a “declaration of war”: religion as “an
empty ceremony, and not a vital principle requiring
active benevolence, justice, love and good will
towards man” (163).
Confirmation continued
• 3. The church as bulwark of slavery: criticism of
Northern ministers who teach that “we ought to obey
man’s law before the law of God” (165).
• 4. “National inconsistency”: comparing national
religious practices
• 4. Constitution as “glorious liberation document”
(168)
Constitution
• Garrison’s position: abolitionists should not vote
because America’s government was pro-slavery;
rejection of a corrupt political process; freedom in the
north for blacks did not grant voting rights
• Douglass, 1851: refusing to pursue the vote is
acquiescing in discrimination; joined the Liberty and
Free Soil parties to get emancipation before major
political leaders; the oppressed should participate in
the political process
Peroration (¶63-64; 169-71)
• He still has hope for the country: drawing
encouragement from the Declaration of
Independence in the context of
internationalism
• “walled cities and empires have become
unfashionable” (170)
• Ethiopianism -- an Africanist African-American
philosophy
• Garrisonian sentiments: bonds across
division within abolitionist movement
Declarations in Dialogue
• A text becomes an intertext: circulation,
imitation, warrant
• Republic of letters: public and private
spheres, counterpublics (social
movements; advocacy)
• The redefinition of the human: who will
count as “man”
21st-century publics: new genres, new
media
Rhetoric is your friend
Rhetorical questions will help you as a writer in any context: Who
speaks? To whom? In what situation? In what genre(s)? For what
purpose? In what styles?