I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. (3) $3.99. was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. official permission or approval. (1982). The founding fathers left black people and women out of these rights for "everyone." They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. The speech 'What to the Slaves is the Fourth of July' projected the American Day of Independence from a slave's point of view and brought to light the horrific experiences of slavery. Douglass, Frederick, ed. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. [17] This act drew the ire of the abolitionist movement,[9] and was directly criticized by Douglass in his speech. With this product, you can choose to either have your students read the entire speech and annotate and analyze Douglass' rhetorical devices or you can choose to have your students read shorter excerpts from the speech and do an abbreviated annotation and analysis of rhetorical devices. To honor Black History Month, as an introduction or review of rhetorical appeals and devices, or as a speech exemplar, this Frederick Douglass "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" rhetoric activity is a fabulous addition to any lesson. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Worksheet Excerpt Analyzing Rhetorical Devices in "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?": The speech has since been published under the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. True Christians, according to Douglass, should not stand idly by while the rights and liberty of others are stripped away. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. In a Fourth of July holiday special, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. Over 150,000 persons were sold between 1820 and 1830, and over 300,000 were sold between 1850 and 1860.[15]. Because the church stood behind the decision to abolish the selling and buying of people, so did the rest of the country. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal!And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 19:31. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. The4th of July is the first great fact in your nation's history the very ringbolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destinyPride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetualremembrance. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. What is now known as the "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 as an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.What, then, remains to be argued? Douglass then discusses the internal slave trade in America. Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cuminabridge the fight to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass annotation? Assignment in book chapter School Alief Early College High School Course English language and literature (ELL2002) Uploaded by God Academic year2021/2022 Helpful? Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. [5] Many copies of one section of it, beginning in paragraph 32, have been circulated online. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.What, am I to argue 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 hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to bum their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? You may rejoice, I must mourn. How digital misinformation may keep you from a good nights sleep, Study finds surgical patients with addiction issues may be at greater risk for complications, including sudden cardiac death after anesthesia, Khalil Gibran Muhammad says College Board needs to stand firm behind curriculum, Chief counsel of respected mid-70s Senate inquiry into improper federal investigations says credibility of oversight function at stake, 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, By Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite Harvard Staff Writer, Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? in 1852, drawing parallels between the Revolutionary War and the fight to abolish slavery. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He celebrates the efforts of the founding fathers of America for fighting back against the tyranny of England.[18]. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. The United States does not have to stay the way it is. The drove moves tardily. Summary of Part 1:In part one of the speech "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July", Fredrick Douglass. welcome anything! It is neither. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. [10] Douglass had spoken at Corinthian Hall in the past. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more. Frederick Douglass, a well-known Black writer, orator, and abolitionist was asked to address an anti-slavery group on the July 4 holiday in 1852. Douglass then pivots to the present, stating that "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future". What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. In this respect, Douglass's views converged with that of Abraham Lincoln's[25] in that those politicians who were saying that the Constitution was a justification for their beliefs in regard to slavery were doing so dishonestly. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The Oratory of Fr. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. 4th period Mrs. Landrew Fredrick Douglass Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Great Britain, and many other countries of that time, had already abolished slavery from its territories. Douglass equates this to being worse than many other things that are banned, in particular, books and plays that are banned for infidelity. by Frederick Douglass 1852 11th Grade Lexile: 1140 Font Size Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was an African American social reformer, orator, and writer. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.I was born amid such sights and scenes. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead or a hostile position towards that movement. ROY:One of the things that Douglass writings shows us is that he believed in amplifying a variety of voices. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. Yea! [4], Noted for its biting irony and bitter rhetoric, and acute textual analysis of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Christian Bible, the speech is among the most widely known of all of Douglass's writings. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass-- a former American slave, abolitionist leader and adroit speaker-- spoke in Rochester, New York about the affectation of celebrating independence. 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.The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make 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 cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.I have detained my audience entirely too long already. To . 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what to the slave is the fourth of july annotation