What point is Wiesel trying to make in this paragraph? Use textual evidence to support your answer.

Advisor: James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard Academy, National Humanities Center Fellow.
Copyright National Humanities Centre, 2013

What arguments and rhetorical strategies did Frederick Douglass utilise to persuade a northern, white audience to oppose slavery and favor abolition?

Understanding

In the 1850s abolition was non a widely embraced movement in the Usa. It was considered radical, extreme, and dangerous. In "What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?" Frederick Douglass sought not only to convince people of the wrongfulness of slavery just also to make abolition more acceptable to Northern whites.

Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Text

Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on July five, 1852.

Text Complication

Grades xi-CCR complexity ring.
For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore.org.

Text Type

Speech, historical, informational.

Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.

X

Common Core Country Standards

• ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.five (Analyze in detail how a complex primary source is structured…)

Advanced Placement US History

• Key Concept 5.2 (I-B) (Abolitionists…mounted a highly visible entrada against slavery…)

Advanced Placement Language and Limerick

• Developing…the power to evaluate…master…sources
• Reading nonfiction…to give students opportunities to identify and explicate an author's utilize of rhetorical strategies and techniques

Teacher's Note

In add-on to making historical points about nineteenth-century attitudes toward slavery, race, and abolition, you tin can use this voice communication to teach formal rhetoric. Nosotros have divided the accost into four sections according to the function of each one. This partition follows the archetype construction of argumentative writing:

1. paragraphs 1–3: introduction (exordium)
2. paragraphs 4–29: narrative or argument of fact (narratio)
3. paragraphs 30–70: arguments and counter-arguments (confirmatio and refutatio)
4. paragraph 71: conclusion (peroratio)

We take included notes that explain the function of each section besides as questions that invite discussion of the ways in which Douglass deploys rhetoric to brand his instance.

This lesson features 5 interactive activities, which tin exist accessed by clicking on this icon . The first explores the subtle 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 3rd focuses on his use of syllogistic reasoning, while the quaternary examines how he makes his case through emotion and the fifth through analogy.

We recommend assigning the entire text . For close reading we accept analyzed 18 of the speech'south seventy-one paragraphs through fine-grained questions, near of them text-dependent, that volition enable students to explore rhetorical strategies and meaning themes. The version beneath, 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. Terms that appear in blue are defined on hover and in a printable glossary on the last folio of the classroom version. The student worksheet also includes links to the activities, indicated by this icon .

This is a long lesson. Nosotros recommend dividing students into groups and assigning each group a set of paragraphs to analyze.

Background

Contextualizing Questions

1. What kind of text are we dealing with?
2. When was it written?
3. Who wrote it?
4. For what audience was it intended?
5. For what purpose was it written?

At the invitation of the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Lodge, Frederick Douglass delivered this speech on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. It was reported and reprinted in Northern newspapers and was published and sold as a forty-page pamphlet within weeks of its delivery. The 500 to 600 people who heard Douglass speak were mostly sympathetic to his remarks. A paper noted that when he sat down, "there was a universal burst of applause." Notwithstanding, many who read his speech would not have been so enthusiastic. Fifty-fifty Northerners who were anti-slavery were not necessarily pro-abolition. Many were content to let Southerners continue to hold slaves, a correct they believed was upheld by the Constitution. They only did not want to slavery to spread to areas where it did not be. In this Independence 24-hour interval oration, Douglass sought to persuade those people to embrace what was then considered the extreme position of abolition.

He besides sought to change minds almost the abilities and intelligence of African Americans. In 1852 many, if not about, white Americans believed that African Americans were inferior, indeed, less than fully human. Douglass tries to dispel these notions through an impressive brandish of liberal learning. His speech communication gives aplenty prove of cognition of rhetoric, history, literature, religion, economics, poesy, music, law, even advances in engineering.

Text Analysis

Introduction ('Exordium'): Paragraphs i–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'southward message. Introductions tin can inform listeners of the subject or the purpose of a oral communication, attempt to convince them that a topic is important and worthy of their attending, or ingratiate a speaker with the audience.

2. What does Douglass try to do in this introduction? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
Because his audition is familiar with the subject affair of Fourth of July speeches and because information technology recognizes the importance of the occasion, in his introduction Douglass does non have to sketch out his topic or argue for its significance. Instead, he sets out to ingratiate himself with his listeners. He praises their importance and claims to exist humbled by their stature. He "quails" and "shrinks" before them. He distrusts his "express powers of speech." His ease is credible, not real.

3. Why does he say that "apologies of this sort are generally considered apartment and unmeaning"?
He calls attention to the rhetorical conventions of introductions to signal to his audience that in this instance they do not apply. He seeks to win their trust past assuring them he is sincere.

iv. The word "apartment" frequently means level or smooth. In this context how is Douglass defining the discussion "flat"?
Here the give-and-take "flat" is used to mean dull or superficial. Using the context nosotros tin see that Douglass intends the connotation of the word "flat" not to exist level but instead to mean something that lacks depth or emotion backside it.

5. Why would information technology be "out of the common way" for him to deliver a Fourth of July oration?
As he reminds his audition in the final paragraph of the introduction, he is an escaped slave. By calling attention to the fact that a slave has been invited to speak on freedom, he employs irony, a strategy he volition use throughout the speech to emphasize certain themes.

half-dozen. There are contradictions in Douglass'south self-presentation. What are they? Cite specific instances of them in the text. How tin can you account for them?
In the first paragraph not just does Douglass describe his "powers of speech" equally "limited," but he likewise maintains that he has "express experience" in exercising them, which he claims to have done chiefly in "country schoolhouse houses." Nonetheless in the next paragraph he says that he has spoken in Corinthian Hall many times to many of the same people sitting before him now. The final judgement of the second paragraph ("But neither…") suggests what he is doing. He is walking a tightrope. He seeks at once to ingratiate himself with a display of humility while at the same fourth dimension establishing his authority as a speaker and justifying his presence on the platform. He continues this balancing deed in the next paragraph when he asserts that he has "footling…learning." Yet he deploys the term "exordium," which contradicts the little-learning claim past revealing a study-acquired vocabulary and a knowledge of formal rhetoric.

seven. What expectations do you recollect a white audience would have for a black speaker in 1852? How does Douglass address these expectations in his introduction?
In this introduction Douglass is doing more simply presenting himself to his audition. When he raises the topic of slavery in the third paragraph, he brings into his text a topic which the color of his pare has already brought into Corinthian Hall, racism. Fifty-fifty among some abolitionists there existed the strong prejudice that African Americans were junior, indeed, something less than fully homo. Douglass'south entire voice communication is designed to do dispel that belief. In his introduction he begins to practise so with that subtle flash of learning revealed in his apply of "exordium." Thus with an ironic flash he signals to his listeners that they are in for a serious brandish of learning and rhetorical skill, a feat quite beyond the capacities of an inferior being.

1. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing awareness, has stronger nerves than I have. I practice not call up always to take appeared every bit a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my power, than I practise this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the practise of my limited powers of speech. The task earlier me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered apartment and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my advent would much misrepresent me. The niggling experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in state schoolhouses, avails me aught on the present 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 common style, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who at present honour me with their presence. Simply neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.

3. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance betwixt this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to exist 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 astonishment also equally of gratitude. You volition non, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate grooming, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will continue to lay them before you.

Narrative or Statement of Fact ('Narratio'): Paragraphs iv–29

Paragraph 4

Note: Students are probable to exist familiar with the function of an introduction in a speech just less and then with the part of the narrative section. Y'all might explain that in an accost commemorating an event, speakers often invoke the event by offering a narration of information technology. This reminds the audience why they are gathered together, and it offers speakers the opportunity to describe inspiration for the time to come from the issue. Douglass's narration conspicuously performs the first role and, equally we shall see, the second as well. But it also performs ii other of import functions. Looking back on America's revolutionary by, the narration, through implied comparison, condemns America'southward slave-belongings present. Moreover, it enshrines radical resistance to government policy and revolution in the face of bondage as venerated parts of the mainstream American political tradition. In other words, it equates the abolitionists of 1852 with the patriots of 1776, each group denounced in its day as "plotters of mischief, agitators…rebels, dangerous men."

8. What is the event of Douglass's repetition of the words "your" and "y'all" in this paragraph and throughout the speech?
The repetition of the words "your" and "yous" startlingly emphasizes the distance betwixt Douglass and his audience and signals to his listeners that he does not share their perspective or their attitudes toward the 4th of July.

9. Why does Douglass experience hopeful about America's future? Cite evidence from the text to support your reply.
He takes hope from the fact that the country is young, only seventy-six years old. Its destiny and character are non fixed. Thus it may yet change and abandon slavery.

10. What is he suggesting in the "great streams" metaphor?
If America permits slavery to become a deep and permanent role of its life, the nation might benefit from it, or it might exist destroyed by it, or it could exist morally drained by it. In the end the metaphor is a warning about what might happen if modify does not happen soon.

11. In the sentence "Were the nation older, the patriot'south heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier," why does Douglass equate the patriot and the reformer? Why would both groups be sadder if the nation were older?
In this office of his spoken language Douglass takes pains to equate the founding patriots with contemporary anti-slavery reformers. He begins to make that equation hither. The nation, Douglass tells his audience, is still young, not fix in its way, and thus more than susceptible to alter. Past inference, were it older, it would be more set in its means, and the reformer who would want to change those ways, would be sad. Merely why would a patriot exist sad? From Douglass's perspective, he would exist sorry for the same reason. In Douglass'south view the patriots established a simply nation, i that would not tolerate bondage. Were the nation to mature with the injustice of slavery deeply entrenched in information technology, America would betray the ideals of the Revolution, and thus the patriot would be sad.

iv. This, for the purpose of this commemoration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the mean solar day, and to the human action of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration besides marks the kickoff of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years erstwhile. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so immature. Lxx-six years, though a proficient old historic period for a human, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years past thousands. According to this fact, you lot are, even now, only in the showtime of your national career, even so lingering in the menstruum of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. At that place is hope in the thought, and promise is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The centre of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; only his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she [America] is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will even so give management to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's centre might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its futurity might exist shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets get out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Groovy streams are non easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the world with their mysterious properties. They may likewise rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually period dorsum to the aforementioned old channel, and flow on every bit serenely as ever. Merely, while the river may non be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave cipher backside only the withered branch, and the cruddy stone, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed celebrity. As with rivers so with nations.

…

Paragraph 6

12. According to Douglass, what did the "fathers" practise? Cite specific language from the text.
They rejected "the infallibility of government," "pronounced the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive," and sided with "the right against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor."

thirteen. Why does Douglass assert his understanding with the actions of the "fathers"?
Douglass asserts his agreement with the actions of founders and embraces the principles of the Revolution to create a bond with his audience and to reassure them that, to some caste at to the lowest degree, he participates in the American political tradition.

six. Simply, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute graphic symbol of its acts, presumed to differ from the dwelling regime in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went and so far in their excitement equally to pronounce the measures of regime unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and birthday such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, young man-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a annunciation of agreement on my part would not be worth much to everyone. It would, certainly, bear witness nix, as to what function I might accept taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was correct, and England wrong, is exceedingly like shooting fish in a barrel. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble dauntless, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. Information technology is fashionable to practice and so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men'southward souls. They who did then were accounted in their twenty-four hour period, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, unsafe men. To side with the correct, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our solar day. The crusade of liberty may be stabbed past the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.

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Paragraph 23

14. How would you characterize the structure of the get-go 4 sentences of this paragraph?
The structure balances ideas through antithesis, a rhetorical device that poses reverse qualities confronting each other: They were peace men, just they preferred revolution….".

15. How does the structure of those sentences reinforce the main idea of the paragraph?
The carefully balanced structure reinforces the idea that the founders were themselves balanced, reasonable men.

16. What inference does Douglass desire his audience to draw from his portrayal of the founders?
Since he established an identification between the founders and the abolitionists in paragraphs four and 6, the temperate qualities he ascribes here to the quondam utilize to the latter as well, and this ascription is important considering it addresses the charge that abolitionists were fanatics and monomaniacs.

17. Frequently speakers and writers make their points as much by leaving things out as past putting things in. This strategy is known as the strategic silence. What has Douglass omitted in his portrayal of the fathers? Why would he cull to do so?
Douglass never mentions the fact that many of the fathers were slave owners. This silence allows Douglass to create his own version of the fathers, untainted by facts that would challenge his portrayal. Similarly, they deflect the minds of his listeners from points that might lead them to resist his statement.

xviii. Do you recollect Douglass'southward omission weakens his statement?
Here you might encourage a contend among your students. Some will say the omission weakens Douglass's statement because it straightforwardly refutes his case. How tin can he say that the "fathers" sided "with the oppressed against the oppressor" when many of them were themselves oppressors? Other students may argue that this omission does not weaken his case. Despite being slaveholders, men like Washington and Jefferson did, in fact, establish a nation built on the ethics of justice and freedom. That many of the founders did not live upward to those ethics does not brand them any less compelling. As Douglass says in paragraphs xvi and seventeen (paragraphs we do not analyze in this lesson), the "fathers" enshrined those "saving principles" in the Announcement of Independence, and it is to those principles that the nation must cling. Thus in this part of the voice communication Douglass argues that just because the "fathers" did not fully embrace justice and freedom in 1776 does non hateful that his listeners should non in 1852.

23. They were peace men; simply they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were repose men; simply they did not shrink from agitating confronting oppression. They showed forbearance; but they knew its limits. They believed in lodge; but non in the order of tyranny [authorities dominion of absolute ability]. With them, goose egg was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we dissimilarity information technology with these degenerate times.

…

Arguments and Counter-Arguments ('Confirmatio' and 'Refutatio'):
Paragraphs 30–lxx

Paragraph 35

Note: Arguments and counter-arguments prevarication at the heart of persuasive discourse. Review with your students what speakers and writers try to do when making a case. They put along their arguments and refute those of their opponents. To win over an audience, they may appeal to their listeners' reason by laying out a logical instance, or they may seek to win their trust by impressing them with sound sense or loftier moral character, or they may appeal to their emotions. Nosotros offer passages that illustrate all of these strategies.

nineteen. What point of view does Douglass announce in this paragraph?
In paragraph 3 Douglass alluded to the fact that he had been a slave. In this paragraph his listeners find the full import of the fact for his speech communication. Identifying himself with the enslaved, he announces that he will consider the Fourth of July from their perspective.

35. Fellow-citizens; in a higher place your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I exercise forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this 24-hour interval, "may my right paw forget her cunning, and may my natural language cleave to the roof of my rima oris!" To forget them, to laissez passer lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason well-nigh scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject field, then beau-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall encounter, this day, and its pop characteristics, from the slave's betoken of view. Standing, 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 plow to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the nowadays, and solemnly binds herself to exist false to the hereafter. Continuing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I volition, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the proper name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to phone call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can control, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will non excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any human being, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at center a slaveholder, shall not confess to exist right and but.

Paragraph 36

Action: Douglass's Use of Syllogistic Reasoning
In paragraph 36 Douglass uses logic to testify that slaves are human being beings. Specifically, he employs a syllogism. This activity explores syllogistic reasoning and the manner Douglass employs information technology.

36. Merely I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is merely in this circumstance that you lot and your blood brother abolitionists fail to brand a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you lot persuade more than, and rebuke less, your cause would exist much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plainly in that location is nothing to exist argued. What betoken in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country demand calorie-free? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a homo? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish defiance on the function of the slave. There are 70-two crimes in the Country of Virginia, which, if committed by a black human being, (no affair how ignorant he be), subject area him to the penalty of decease; while just 2 of the same crimes volition bailiwick a white man to the similar punishment. What is this simply the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. Information technology is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under astringent fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you tin can signal to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood 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 clamber, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a fauna, then will I argue with y'all that the slave is a man!

Paragraph 37

xx. How does paragraph 37 chronicle to paragraph 36?
Douglass continues to argue that slaves are men.

21. How does Douglass develop this paragraph?
He does and then by listing examples of some of things slaves do that are done by others besides: ploughing, planting, edifice, writing, raising children, etc.

37. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is information technology not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, fe, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting every bit clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all style of enterprises common to other men, excavation gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the colina-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families every bit husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, nosotros are called upon to testify that nosotros are men!

…

Paragraph 39

22. How does Douglass maintain the lodge and coherence of the offset sentence of this paragraph?
He employs parallelism, a type of system in which a writer places like ideas in a similar structure. Hither Douglass parallels the indignities slaves suffer in a serial of infinitive phrases: "…to brand men brutes, to rob them of their liberty," etc.

23. What is the issue of the repetition of infinitive phrases ("to brand," "to rob," "to work," etc.) in the get-go judgement?
They establish a rhythm that emphasizes each indignity and enhance the emotional touch on of the argument.

39. What, am I to fence that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work 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 irons, to chase them with dogs, to sell them at auction, 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 stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have improve employments for my time and force than such arguments would imply.

40. What, and then, remains to exist argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did non establish information technology; that our doctors of divinity [preachers, ministers] are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that tin can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is by.

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Paragraph 45

Activity: The Emotional Entreatment
In paragraph 45 Douglass argues from emotion. This activity explores the emotional appeal and how Douglass employs it.

45. Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-merchandise, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Here you lot volition see men and women reared like swine for the market. You lot know what is a swine-drover [herder]? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and oversupply the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers [mankind-sellers], armed with pistol, whip and bowie-pocketknife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to exist sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are nutrient for the cotton-field, and the deadly carbohydrate-manufactory. Mark the sorry procession, as information technology moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his barbarous yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his abashed captives! There, run into the old human being, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you delight, upon that young female parent, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching dominicus, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. Come across, also, that daughter of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you lot hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a burglarize; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its fashion to the center of your soul! The crack you lot heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman yous saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her bondage! that gash on her shoulder tells her to motion on. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Nourish the sale; run into men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. Come across this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the dominicus, y'all tin witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as information technology exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

Paragraphs 46–48

24. What strategy of argument does Douglass apply in this section of his speech communication?
Here Douglass established his own moral authority to speak on the effect of slavery by citing his own experience, by establishing himself as reliable witness with showtime-mitt information.

46. I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell'due south Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of man flesh, 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 canton in Maryland, announcing their inflow, through the papers, and on flaming "hand-bills," headed CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were by and large well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

47. The flesh-mongers gather upwardly their victims past dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn coiffure to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.

48. In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused past the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the forenoon, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the bondage, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to notice one who sympathized with me in my horror.

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Paragraph 63

25. How does this paragraph chronicle to the overall thesis of the speech?
Here Douglass offers the strongest illustration of the means in which America is imitation to the ideals information technology has ready for itself.

26. What is the thesis of this paragraph?
The ways in which Americans practice their politics and religion are inconsistent with the values and ideals they claim to exist following.

27. How does Douglass's sentence structure reflect the thesis of the paragraph?
Of the xi sentences in this paragraph, ten exhibit a parallel compound construction in which the first clause identifies an platonic and the following clause refutes America'southward merits to it. Each sentence begins with a slightly accusatory "you" so pivots at a conjunction or a word operation as one — "while," "but," "even so" — that suggests contradiction.

63. Americans! your republican politics, non less than your republican faith, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political ability of the nation (as embodied in the ii nifty political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of 3 millions of your countrymen. You bung your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Republic of austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while yous yourselves consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, award them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them similar h2o; but the fugitives from your ain land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as roughshod and dreadful equally ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in forehandedness, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and brand the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her [Hungary'southward] cause against her oppressors; simply, in regard to the ten thou wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold every bit an iceberg at the thought of freedom for the enslaved of America. Y'all discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; still, y'all sustain a arrangement which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. Y'all can bare your bust to the tempest of British artillery to throw off a threepenny revenue enhancement on tea; and nonetheless wring the last hard-earned farthing [a coin formerly used in Great britain] from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe "that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth," and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love i another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your ain. Yous declare, before the world, and are understood by the earth to declare, that you "agree these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed past their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, amidst these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and yet, you hold securely, in a chains which, co-ordinate to your own Thomas Jefferson, "is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose," a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.

…

Paragraph 68

Activity: Argument By Analogy
In paragraph 68, Douglass introduces another tool of persuasion, argument by analogy, which is explored in this activity.

Note: This paragraph is an important role of Douglass'south refutatio and equally such deserves careful attending. 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 theory about Constitutional estimation.

68. Swain-citizens! there is no affair in respect to which, the people of the North take allowed themselves to be and then ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery grapheme of the Constitution. In that instrument I concord at that place is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted every bit it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY Document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery amongst them? Is it at the gateway [the preamble]? or is it in the temple [the body of the Constitution]? It is neither. While I do not intend to debate this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to exist, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding musical instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere exist found in information technology. What would be idea of an instrument [legal agreement, in this instance a deed], drawn upward, legally drawn upwards, for the purpose of entitling [giving buying to] the city of Rochester to a tract [slice] of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of estimation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can empathize 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 hold that every American citizen has a right to form an stance of the Constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to brand his opinion the prevailing one. Without this correct, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can exist likewise attentive, and no American middle besides devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our swain-citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the primal law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in agreement thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed every bit audio lawyers, so regard the Constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is non presumption in a individual citizen to form an stance of that instrument.

…

Determination ('Peroratio'): Paragraph 71

Paragraph 71

Note: Conclusions are important. Ask your students how they function and what they should exercise. The final words an audience hears, they frequently linger and shape the impression of an entire oral communication. Traditionally, speakers utilize them to practice four things: go out the audience with a favorable opinion, emphasize key points, stimulate an appropriate emotional response, or summarize the statement. Douglass does non emphasize key points or restate his arguments. Rather, he seeks to cast his case for abolition in a favorable low-cal and instill hope in his listeners.

28. What are conclusions supposed to do?
Traditionally, four things: leave the audience with a favorable opinion, emphasize fundamental points, stimulate an advisable emotional response, or summarize the argument.

29. Why is it important for Douglass to tell his listeners that he does "not despair of this country"?
Fifty-fifty though he has just delivered a dark and stinging denunciation of the state, he does not desire his listeners to leave the hall feeling depressed and hopeless.

30. On what does Douglass base of operations the hope he expresses in this paragraph?
He looks to the by and the ideals expressed in the Proclamation of Independence. For Douglass those ideals, if the nation can alive up to them, brand the U.s.a., despite its flaws, a place of hope and hope for the enslaved. He also looks to the hereafter in which he believes commercial and technological progress — ships using steam to brand a "pathway" over the bounding main and telegraph cables using "lightning" (electricity) to do the same nether it — will spread intelligence, enlightenment, and moral progress throughout the world.

71. Allow me to say, in conclusion, withal the dark picture I have this day presented of the land of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is non shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, exit off where I began, with hope. While cartoon encouragement from the Annunciation of Independence, the bully principles information technology contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered past the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages agone. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding earth, and trot round in the aforementioned old path of its fathers without interference. The fourth dimension was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful graphic symbol could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Noesis was and then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. Just a change has at present come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne abroad the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the ocean, besides equally on the world. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, only link nations together. From Boston to London is now a vacation excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on 1 side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other. The furthermost and almost fabled Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is existence solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Permit there be Lite," has not yet spent its strength. No abuse, no outrage whether in gustatory modality, sport or avarice, can now hibernate itself from the all-pervading calorie-free. The iron shoe, and crippled pes of Red china must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rising and put on her all the same unwoven garment. "Federal democratic republic of ethiopia shall stretch out her manus unto God." In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in proverb it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o'er!
When from their galling chains set complimentary,
Th' oppressed shall vilely bend the articulatio genus,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes, no more:—
That year volition come, and Freedom'due south reign,
To human his plundered rights again
Restore.

God speed the day when human claret
Shall cease to period!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human alliance,
And each render for evil, good—
Not blow for blow:—
That day will come, all feuds to finish,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant'due south presence cower;
But all to Manhood's stature tower,
By equal birth!—
That hour volition come up, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house the thrall
Go along.

Until that year, day, hour make it,
With head and center and hand I'll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,—
The spoiler of his casualty deprive,―
And so witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the price,
Be driven.

---

Image: Daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass, ca. 1855 (creator unknown). Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Rubel Collection, Partial and Promised Gift of William Rubel, 2001 (2001.756). Reproduced by permission.

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Source: https://americainclass.org/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/

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