Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Delivered July 5th, 1852Corinthian HallRochester, 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, ironyDouglass 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?” (¶30, 155; 367).

•Irony rather than argument: “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument is needed” (¶38, 158; 371).

Exordium (¶ 1-3): • Douglass: I won’t “grace my

speech with any high sounding exordium” (148; 359-60).

• Little learning

• Modesty trope - a convention

• Distance: “between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped”

Narratio: the story, historical context (¶4-28; 149-54; 362-66)

• A story that does not need to be retold

• How to think about time:

• the celebration of the day

• the childhood of the Republic of America - “Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier”

• Geological time: analogy of the river (¶4)

• A “simple story”;“as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor: a national trait, a national weakness” (¶27)

Narration as argument

• “an unfashionable idea” (¶6): “here lies the merit”

• “Resolved. . . “ (¶13)

• 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” (¶14).

• “The Declaration of Independence is the Ring-Bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny . . . Stand by those principles” (¶15)

• “That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost” (¶16). The ship of state imperiled: crisis

Ethos and irony: an oscillation between division and identification“The point from which I am compelled to view them . . .”- division

“I will unite with you to honor their memory” (¶20)

----

“They were peace men . . .”(¶22): antithesis

Laying the corner-stone of the national superstructure through syntax: “Fully appreciating . . .” (¶24)

From monument to crisis (¶29-33)

• “ 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.

• “Why am I called upon to speak here to-day?” –a “sad sense of disparity between us” (¶32)

Sharp reminders of distance/division

• “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

An ironic confirmatio: an argument which does not need to be argued• “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; 368)

• “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.”

What does not need to be argued:

• 1. The slave is a man: legal evidence (¶335)

“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; 370)

• 2. The slave owns his/her body -- “natural right to freedom” does not need the devices of argument (158): “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him” (158).

Confirmatio continued

• 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? (160; 373)

• 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

• 5. 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: the monumental becomes a flow

• 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 friendRhetorical 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?