What Does Ruskin Say England Must Do to Again Be a Source of Light a Center of Peace Quizlet

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

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

Understanding

In the 1850s abolition was non a widely embraced move in the United States. Information technology was considered radical, extreme, and unsafe. In "What to the Slave Is the Quaternary of July?" Frederick Douglass sought non only to convince people of the wrongfulness of slavery simply as well to make abolitionism 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 v, 1852.

Text Complication

Grades 11-CCR complexity ring.
For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore.org.

Text Blazon

Oral communication, historical, informational.

Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.

X

Common Core Land Standards

• ELA-LITERACY.RH.eleven-12.v (Analyze in particular how a complex primary source is structured…)

Advanced Placement US History

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

Avant-garde Placement Language and Composition

• Developing…the ability to evaluate…primary…sources
• Reading nonfiction…to give students opportunities to identify and explain an author's use of rhetorical strategies and techniques

Teacher'southward Annotation

In addition to making historical points about nineteenth-century attitudes toward slavery, race, and abolition, you lot can use this speech to teach formal rhetoric. Nosotros accept divided the address into iv sections according to the role of each i. This division follows the classic structure of belligerent writing:

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

We have included notes that explain the function of each section as well as questions that invite discussion of the ways in which Douglass deploys rhetoric to make his case.

This lesson features five interactive activities, which can be 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 make up one's mind how Douglass supports his thesis. The third focuses on his apply of syllogistic reasoning, while the fourth examines how he makes his case through emotion and the 5th through analogy.

We recommend assigning the entire text . For close reading we have analyzed eighteen of the speech's 70-one paragraphs through fine-grained questions, most of them text-dependent, that will enable students to explore rhetorical strategies and significant 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 "Education the Text" annotation. Terms that appear in blue are defined on hover and in a printable glossary on the last page of the classroom version. The educatee worksheet also includes links to the activities, indicated by this icon .

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

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 Society, Frederick Douglass delivered this speech on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Information technology was reported and reprinted in Northern newspapers and was published and sold as a forty-folio pamphlet within weeks of its delivery. The 500 to 600 people who heard Douglass speak were more often than not sympathetic to his remarks. A newspaper noted that when he sat downwards, "at that place was a universal burst of adulation." Nonetheless, many who read his speech communication would not have been then enthusiastic. Fifty-fifty Northerners who were anti-slavery were non necessarily pro-abolition. Many were content to let Southerners proceed to hold slaves, a correct they believed was upheld by the Constitution. They simply did not desire to slavery to spread to areas where information technology did non exist. In this Independence Day oration, Douglass sought to persuade those people to embrace what was and so considered the farthermost position of abolitionism.

He as well sought to modify minds about the abilities and intelligence of African Americans. In 1852 many, if non most, white Americans believed that African Americans were junior, indeed, less than fully man. Douglass tries to dispel these notions through an impressive display of liberal learning. His speech gives ample evidence of knowledge of rhetoric, history, literature, religion, economics, poetry, music, police, even advances in technology.

Text Analysis

Introduction ('Exordium'): Paragraphs 1–3

Close Reading Questions

i. What are introductions supposed to do?
They seek to engage the involvement of listeners and brand them receptive to the speaker's bulletin. Introductions tin inform listeners of the subject or the purpose of a voice communication, attempt to convince them that a topic is of import and worthy of their attention, or ingratiate a speaker with the audience.

two. What does Douglass effort to do in this introduction? Cite bear witness from the text to back up your answer.
Because his audience is familiar with the subject affair of Fourth of July speeches and because it recognizes the importance of the occasion, in his introduction Douglass does not take to sketch out his topic or debate for its significance. Instead, he sets out to ingratiate himself with his listeners. He 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 credible, non real.

three. 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 case they do non use. He seeks to win their trust by assuring them he is sincere.

4. The word "flat" often means level or smooth. In this context how is Douglass defining the word "apartment"?
Here the word "flat" is used to hateful wearisome or superficial. Using the context we can run into that Douglass intends the connotation of the give-and-take "flat" not to be level but instead to mean something that lacks depth or emotion behind it.

5. Why would it be "out of the common way" for him to deliver a Fourth of July oration?
As he reminds his audience 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 liberty, he employs irony, a strategy he will use throughout the spoken language to emphasize certain themes.

6. There are contradictions in Douglass's self-presentation. What are they? Cite specific instances of them in the text. How can you account for them?
In the first paragraph not only does Douglass describe his "powers of speech" equally "limited," but he also maintains that he has "limited feel" in exercising them, which he claims to have done chiefly in "country school houses." Yet in the adjacent paragraph he says that he has spoken in Corinthian Hall many times to many of the same people sitting before him now. The concluding sentence 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 time establishing his authority every bit a speaker and justifying his presence on the platform. He continues this balancing human action in the next paragraph when he asserts that he has "little…learning." Yet he deploys the term "exordium," which contradicts the petty-learning claim by revealing a study-acquired vocabulary and a knowledge of formal rhetoric.

7. What expectations do you think a white audience would have for a black speaker in 1852? How does Douglass accost these expectations in his introduction?
In this introduction Douglass is doing more than than simply presenting himself to his audition. When he raises the topic of slavery in the 3rd paragraph, he brings into his text a topic which the color of his pare has already brought into Corinthian Hall, racism. Even among some abolitionists there existed the strong prejudice that African Americans were inferior, indeed, something less than fully human. Douglass's entire speech is designed to do dispel that belief. In his introduction he begins to exercise so with that subtle flash of learning revealed in his employ of "exordium." Thus with an ironic wink he 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 junior 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 do not remember always to have appeared equally a speaker before any assembly more than shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I exercise this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the practise of my limited powers of speech. The chore before 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, notwithstanding, that mine will non be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I accept had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me zero on the present occasion.

ii. The papers and placards say, that I am to evangelize a fourth [of] July oration. This certainly sounds big, and out of the common way, for it is truthful that I have oft had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. Simply neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I accept of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.

3. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the one-time, are past no means slight. That I am here today is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You lot will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With petty 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 volition proceed to lay them before you lot.

Narrative or Argument of Fact ('Narratio'): Paragraphs 4–29

Paragraph 4

Annotation: Students are likely to be familiar with the part of an introduction in a oral communication but less so with the office of the narrative section. Yous might explain that in an address 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 opportunity to describe inspiration for the time to come from the consequence. Douglass'south narration conspicuously performs the first role and, equally we shall see, the 2d as well. But it besides performs two other important functions. Looking back on America'southward revolutionary past, the narration, through implied comparison, condemns America'due south 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 twenty-four hour period as "plotters of mischief, agitators…rebels, unsafe men."

8. What is the effect of Douglass'southward repetition of the words "your" and "y'all" in this paragraph and throughout the speech?
The repetition of the words "your" and "y'all" 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.

nine. Why does Douglass feel hopeful near America's future? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
He takes hope from the fact that the country is immature, just lxx-half-dozen years old. Its destiny and grapheme are not stock-still. Thus it may yet change and carelessness slavery.

10. What is he suggesting in the "slap-up streams" metaphor?
If America permits slavery to get a deep and permanent function of its life, the nation might do good from it, or information technology might exist destroyed by information technology, or information technology could exist morally drained by it. In the stop the metaphor is a alert near what might happen if modify does not happen soon.

xi. In the sentence "Were the nation older, the patriot's center might be sadder, and the reformer'south brow heavier," why does Douglass equate the patriot and the reformer? Why would both groups be sadder if the nation were older?
In this role of his speech Douglass takes pains to equate the founding patriots with contemporary anti-slavery reformers. He begins to make that equation here. The nation, Douglass tells his audience, is still young, not set up in its way, and thus more susceptible to modify. By inference, were it older, it would be more fix in its ways, and the reformer who would want to change those ways, would be sad. Merely why would a patriot be sad? From Douglass's perspective, he would exist sad for the aforementioned reason. In Douglass's view the patriots established a just nation, ane that would non tolerate bondage. Were the nation to mature with the injustice of slavery deeply entrenched in it, America would beguile the ideals of the Revolution, and thus the patriot would be sad.

4. This, for the purpose of this commemoration, is the fourth of July. Information technology is the altogether of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Information technology carries your minds dorsum to the day, and to the human action of your groovy deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that human activity, and that day. This celebration also marks the offset of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is at present 76 years one-time. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so immature. Lxx-six years, though a skilful old historic period for a human being, is merely a mere speck in the life of a nation. Iii score years and 10 is the allotted fourth dimension for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. Co-ordinate to this fact, yous are, even now, only in the commencement of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I echo, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the idea, and hope is much needed, under the nighttime clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with aroused flashes, portending disastrous times; but his middle may well vanquish lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she [America] is nevertheless in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot'south heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is alleviation in the idea that America is young. Not bad streams are not 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 earth with their mysterious properties. They may likewise rise in wrath and fury, and behave away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old aqueduct, and flow on every bit serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned bated, it may dry out up, and leave nothing behind merely the withered branch, and the cruddy rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping air current, the lamentable tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

…

Paragraph half-dozen

12. Co-ordinate to Douglass, what did the "fathers" do? Cite specific language from the text.
They rejected "the infallibility of authorities," "pronounced the measures of authorities unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive," and sided with "the right confronting the wrong, with the weak confronting the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor."

thirteen. 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 create a bond with his audition and to reassure them that, to some caste at least, he participates in the American political tradition.

6. But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable thought of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute 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 so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and birthday such as ought non to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, beau-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a announcement of understanding on my part would non be worth much to anybody. Information technology would, certainly, evidence zippo, as to what function I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say at present that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody tin say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to practice so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the crusade of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did and so were accounted in their mean solar day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, confronting the wrong, with the weak confronting the potent, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of freedom may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. Just, to proceed.

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Paragraph 23

14. How would you narrate the structure of the get-go iv sentences of this paragraph?
The structure balances ideas through antonym, a rhetorical device that poses opposite qualities against each other: They were peace men, only they preferred revolution….".

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

16. What inference does Douglass want his audience to describe from his portrayal of the founders?
Since he established an identification between the founders and the abolitionists in paragraphs iv and half-dozen, the temperate qualities he ascribes hither to the onetime use to the latter every bit well, and this ascription is important because it addresses the charge that abolitionists were fanatics and monomaniacs.

17. Often speakers and writers make their points equally 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 choose to do and so?
Douglass never mentions the fact that many of the fathers were slave owners. This silence allows Douglass to create his ain 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 argument.

18. Do you remember Douglass'due south omission weakens his statement?
Here you might encourage a contend amongst your students. Some volition say the omission weakens Douglass's statement considering information technology straightforwardly refutes his case. How can he say that the "fathers" sided "with the oppressed against the oppressor" when many of them were themselves oppressors? Other students may debate that this omission does not weaken his example. Despite being slaveholders, men similar Washington and Jefferson did, in fact, institute a nation built on the ideals of justice and freedom. That many of the founders did not live upwards to those ideals does non make them any less compelling. As Douglass says in paragraphs sixteen and seventeen (paragraphs nosotros do not analyze in this lesson), the "fathers" enshrined those "saving principles" in the Declaration of Independence, and it is to those principles that the nation must cling. Thus in this part of the speech Douglass argues that but considering the "fathers" did not fully embrace justice and freedom in 1776 does not hateful that his listeners should not in 1852.

23. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to chains. They were repose men; but they did non shrink from agitating confronting oppression. They showed forbearance; merely they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the social club of tyranny [government rule of absolute power]. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" non slavery and oppression. Yous may well cherish the retentiveness of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

…

Arguments and Counter-Arguments ('Confirmatio' and 'Refutatio'):
Paragraphs thirty–70

Paragraph 35

Note: Arguments and counter-arguments lie at the heart of persuasive discourse. Review with your students what speakers and writers try to do when making a example. They put forth 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 example, or they may seek to win their trust past impressing them with audio sense or high moral character, or they may appeal to their emotions. We offer passages that illustrate all of these strategies.

19. 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 notice the full import of the fact for his speech. Identifying himself with the enslaved, he announces that he will consider the Fourth of July from their perspective.

35. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more than intolerable past the jubilee shouts that accomplish them. If I exercise forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this mean solar day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my natural language cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to laissez passer lightly over their wrongs, and to chinkle in with the popular theme, would be treason near scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject area, then beau-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I practice not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and carry 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 present, the bear of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is imitation to the past, imitation to the present, and solemnly binds herself to exist false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and haemorrhage 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 overlooked and trampled upon, dare to telephone call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! "I volition not equivocate; I will non excuse;" I will apply the severest language I tin can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any human being, whose judgment is non blinded by prejudice, or who is not at eye a slaveholder, shall not confess to exist right and just.

Paragraph 36

Action: Douglass'due south Use of Syllogistic Reasoning
In paragraph 36 Douglass uses logic to show that slaves are human beings. Specifically, he employs a syllogism. This activity explores syllogistic reasoning and the style Douglass employs it.

36. Only I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is only in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists neglect to make a favorable impression on the public listen. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would exist much more likely to succeed. Only, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what co-operative of the subject field do the people of this country demand light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That indicate is conceded already. Nobody doubts information technology. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish defiance on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black homo, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of expiry; while merely two of the same crimes volition subject a white man to the like penalisation. What is this simply the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible existence? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, nether astringent fines and penalties, the educational activity of the slave to read or to write. When you can point 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 body of water, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a animate being, 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?
He does so by list examples of some of things slaves do that are done by others besides: ploughing, planting, building, writing, raising children, etc.

37. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while nosotros are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, amalgam bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, fe, copper, silverish and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, interim every bit clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among united states lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gilt in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, to a higher place all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking 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 beginning sentence of this paragraph?
He employs parallelism, a type of organization in which a author places similar ideas in a similar construction. Here Douglass parallels the indignities slaves suffer in a serial of infinitive phrases: "…to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty," etc.

23. What is the result of the repetition of infinitive phrases ("to make," "to rob," "to work," etc.) in the first sentence?
They establish a rhythm that emphasizes each indignity and enhance the emotional affect of the statement.

39. What, am I to argue that information technology is incorrect to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to piece of work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to trounce them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt 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 take better employments for my time and force than such arguments would imply.

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

…

Paragraph 45

Action: The Emotional Appeal
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-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Here you will meet men and women reared like swine for the marketplace. You know what is a swine-drover [herder]? I will show you lot a human being-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the land, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these homo flesh-jobbers [flesh-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 be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as information technology 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! At that place, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are blank to the scorching lord's day, her briny tears falling on the brow of the infant in her arms. See, as well, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yeah! weeping, every bit she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their forcefulness; of a sudden you hear a quick snap, like the belch of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the concatenation rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the centre of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you lot heard, was from the woman y'all saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered nether the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Nourish the sale; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. Run across this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, lamentable sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, yous can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is simply a glance at the American slave-trade, as information technology exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the U.s..

Paragraphs 46–48

24. What strategy of argument does Douglass utilize in this section of his speech?
Hither Douglass established his own moral authorisation to speak on the outcome of slavery past citing his own experience, by establishing himself equally reliable witness with first-paw information.

46. I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a kid, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell's Point, Baltimore, and accept watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Bowl, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human mankind, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a 1000 slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, past Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming "hand-bills," headed CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Ever ready to beverage, 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 artillery of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

47. The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number accept been collected here, a send is chartered, for the purpose of carrying the forlorn crew 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 sure caution is observed.

48. In the deep withal darkness of midnight, I have been often angry past the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The ache of my adolescent eye was intense; 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 chains, and the centre-rending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.

…

Paragraph 63

25. How does this paragraph relate to the overall thesis of the spoken communication?
Hither Douglass offers the strongest illustration of the ways in which America is fake to the ideals information technology has fix for itself.

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

27. How does Douglass's judgement structure reverberate the thesis of the paragraph?
Of the xi sentences in this paragraph, 10 exhibit a parallel compound structure in which the start clause identifies an ideal and the following clause refutes America'southward claim to it. Each sentence begins with a slightly accusatory "you" and then pivots at a conjunction or a give-and-take functioning equally one — "while," "merely," "notwithstanding" — that suggests contradiction.

63. Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You lot boast of your beloved of liberty, your superior culture, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to back up and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Autonomous institutions, while you 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 away, laurels them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your coin to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you lot annunciate, chase, arrest, shoot and impale. You celebrity in your refinement and your universal educational activity yet y'all maintain a organisation as brutal and dreadful equally ever stained the graphic symbol of a nation — a organisation begun in forehandedness, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the distressing 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 [Republic of hungary'due south] crusade confronting her oppressors; only, in regard to the ten thousand 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 discipline of public discourse! Y'all are all on burn at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; only are as common cold as an iceberg at the idea of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the nobility of labor; withal, you sustain a organisation which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You tin blank your bosom to the storm of British arms to throw off a threepenny taxation on tea; and withal wring the final hard-earned farthing [a coin formerly used in Great Uk] from the grasp of the blackness laborers of your state. You profess to believe "that, of one claret, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face up of all the world," and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; notwithstanding you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are non colored similar your own. You declare, before the earth, and are understood past the world to declare, that you "concur these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with sure inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness;" and however, you lot agree securely, in a chains which, according 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 office of Douglass's refutatio and as such deserves careful attending. Not just does he address a powerful justification for the continuation of slavery — the belief that information technology is protected by the Constitution — but he too asserts a controversial theory about Constitutional interpretation.

68. Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North accept allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I concord at that place is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; just, interpreted every bit it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY Document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway [the preamble]? or is it in the temple [the torso of the Constitution]? Information technology is neither. While I do not intend to fence this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if information technology be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave tin anywhere be plant in it. What would be idea of an musical instrument [legal understanding, in this case a deed], drawn up, legally fatigued upwardly, for the purpose of entitling [giving ownership to] the metropolis of Rochester to a tract [slice] of land, in which no mention of land was made? At present, in that location 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 equally y'all and I, and all of united states, tin understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I spotter the thought 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 correct to form an stance of the Constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to utilise all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this correct, the liberty of an American denizen would be every bit insecure every bit that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells u.s. that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be also circumspect, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is apparently and intelligible, and is meant for the domicile-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the fundamental police force, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding 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 information technology, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private denizen to grade an stance of that instrument.

…

Decision ('Peroratio'): Paragraph 71

Paragraph 71

Annotation: Conclusions are important. Ask your students how they function and what they should do. The last words an audience hears, they oftentimes linger and shape the impression of an entire speech. Traditionally, speakers apply them to do 4 things: leave the audition with a favorable opinion, emphasize fundamental points, stimulate an appropriate emotional response, or summarize the argument. Douglass does not emphasize cardinal points or restate his arguments. Rather, he seeks to bandage his example for abolition in a favorable light and instill hope in his listeners.

28. What are conclusions supposed to exercise?
Traditionally, iv things: leave the audience with a favorable stance, emphasize central points, stimulate an appropriate emotional response, or summarize the argument.

29. Why is it of import for Douglass to tell his listeners that he does "not despair of this country"?
Even though he has simply delivered a dark and stinging denunciation of the state, he does non want his listeners to leave the hall feeling depressed and hopeless.

30. On what does Douglass base the 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 alive up to them, make the United States, despite its flaws, a place of promise 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 sea and telegraph cables using "lightning" (electricity) to do the same under it — will spread intelligence, enlightenment, and moral progress throughout the world.

71. Allow me to say, in conclusion, yet the nighttime motion-picture show I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I exercise 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, leave off where I began, with hope. While cartoon encouragement from the Proclamation of Independence, the great principles information technology contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is likewise cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not at present stand up in the same relation to each other that they did ages agone. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time 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. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. Just a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires take get unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the potent metropolis. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the world. It makes its pathway over and under the ocean, as well every bit on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer separate, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Infinite is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other. The far-off and almost fabled Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Allow at that place be Light," has not yet spent its force. No corruption, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading calorie-free. The atomic number 26 shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must ascension and put on her yet 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 saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide earth o'er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th' oppressed shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes, no more:—
That year will come, and Liberty's reign,
To man his plundered rights once more
Restore.

God speed the day when homo blood
Shall cease to menstruation!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of man brotherhood,
And each render for evil, good—
Not accident for blow:—
That day will come, all feuds to end,
And modify into a true-blue friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious 60 minutes,
When none on world
Shall do a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant'due south presence cower;
But all to Manhood'due south stature tower,
Past equal birth!—
That hour volition come up, to each, to all,
And from his prison-firm the thrall
Go along.

Until that yr, twenty-four hours, 60 minutes arrive,
With caput and heart and paw I'll strive,
To intermission the rod, and rend the gyve,—
The spoiler of his casualty deprive,―
So witness Sky!
And never from my chosen postal service,
Whate'er the peril or the cost,
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/