from what to the slave is the fourth of july

Oral communication by Frederick Douglass

Coordinates: 43°09′22″Due north 77°36′47″W  /  43.1562269°Due north 77.6129184°Due west  / 43.1562269; -77.6129184

Frederick Douglass circa 1852

The 1852 pamphlet printing of the speech

"What to the Slave Is the Quaternary of July?"^{[ane] [2]} is the title now given to a speech by Frederick Douglass delivered on July five, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at a coming together organized past the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.^[3] The speech is perhaps the most widely known of all of Frederick Douglass' writings save his autobiographies. Many copies of one section of it, start in paragraph 32, accept been circulated online.^[4] Due to this and the variant titles given to it in various places, and the fact that it is called a July Quaternary Oration just was actually delivered on July 5, some confusion has arisen near the date and contents of the oral communication. The oral communication has since been published nether the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series I, Vol. 2. (1982) ^[5]

While referring to the celebrations of the Independence Day in the United states of america the day before, the speech uses biting irony and bitter rhetoric, and acute textual assay of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, and the Christian Bible, to advance a values-based argument against the continued beingness of Slavery in the Usa.^[vi] Douglass orates that positive statements nigh American values, such as liberty, citizenship, and freedom, were an crime to the enslaved population of the Us because of their lack of liberty, freedom, and citizenship. Besides, Douglass referred not but to the captivity of enslaved people, but to the merciless exploitation and the cruelty and torture that slaves were subjected to in the U.s..^[vii] Rhetoricians R.50. Heath and D. Waymer called this topic the "paradox of the positive" considering information technology highlights how something positive and meant to be positive can also exclude individuals.^[7]

Views expressed in the speech [edit]

The 4th of July Address, delivered in Corinthian Hall, by Frederick Douglass, is published on good paper, and makes a neat pamphlet of forty pages. The 'Address' may be had at this role, toll ten cents, a unmarried copy, or six dollars per hundred.

—Advertizement for the pamphlet of Douglass' speech from the July 12, 1852 edition of Frederick Douglass' Paper (formerly The North Star)

Douglass said that the fathers of the nation were great statesmen, and that the values expressed in the Proclamation of Independence were "saving principles", and the "ringbolt of your nations destiny", stating, "stand up by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, confronting all foes, and at any toll." However, he maintained that slaves owed zip to and had no positive feelings towards the founding of the United States. He faulted America for utter hypocrisy and betrayal of those values in maintaining the institution of slavery.

What have I, or those I represent, to practice with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Announcement of Independence, extended to us?...What, to the American slave, is your quaternary of July? I answer; a twenty-four hour period that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.^[8]

Douglass too stresses the view that slaves and complimentary Americans are equal in nature. He expresses his belief in the speech that he and other slaves are fighting the same fight in terms of wishing to be free that White Americans, the ancestors of the white people he is addressing, fought lxx years earlier.

They were statesmen, patriots, and heroes, and…with them, justice, liberty, and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression.^{[9] : 340}

Douglass also says that if the residents of America believe that slaves are "men",^{[ix] : 342} they should be treated as such. True Christians, according to Douglass, should not stand up idly by while the rights and liberty of others are stripped away.

Douglass denounces the churches for betraying their own biblical and Christian values. He is outraged past the lack of responsibility and indifference towards slavery that many sects accept taken around the nation. He says that, if anything, many churches really stand behind slavery and support the continued being of the institution. Douglass equates this to being worse than many other things that are banned, in particular, books and plays that are banned for infidelity.

They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and fell cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the pagan writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done.^{[9] : 344}

Nevertheless, Douglass claims that this tin change. The United States does not have to stay the way information technology is. The country can progress similar it has before, transforming from being a colony of a far-away king to an independent nation. United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, and many other countries of that fourth dimension, had already abolished slavery from its territories. The British achieved this through faith or more specifically, the church. Because the church stood backside the determination to abolish the selling and buying of people, and so did the residual of the country. Douglass argues that organized religion is the middle of the problem only likewise the main solution to it.

Douglass believed that slavery could exist eliminated with the support of the church, and also with the reexamination of what the Bible was actually saying.

You profess to believe, "that, of i blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the world," and hath commanded all men everywhere to love ane another; all the same y'all notoriously hate (and celebrity in your hatred) all men whose skins are not colored like your own.^{[9] : 345}

Douglass wants his audience to realize that they are not living up to their proclaimed beliefs. He talks virtually how they, existence Americans, are proud of their land and their religion and how they rejoice in the name of liberty and freedom and however they do not offering those things to millions of their land's residents.^{[9] : 345}

He employs irony to do a lot of this work. Douglass spends time celebrating the efforts of the founding fathers of America for fighting dorsum against the tyranny of England when he says^[ten]

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was built-in! Information technology was a startling idea, much more and so, than we, at this altitude of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that twenty-four hour period, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by information technology.

Douglass details the hardships past Americans in one case endured when they were members of British colonies and validates their feelings of ill treatment. He does all this to prove the irony of their disability to sympathize with the Black people they oppressed in vicious ways that the forefathers they valorized never experienced. He validates the feelings of injustice the Founders felt and so juxtaposes their experiences with vivid descriptions of the harshness of slavery when he says:^[11]

The crevice yous heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you lot heard, was from the woman you saw with the baby. 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 collection to New Orleans. Attend the auction; run across men examined like horses; meet the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See 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 sun, you tin witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is merely a glance at the American slave-trade, equally information technology exists, at this moment, in the ruling function of the United States.

Essentially, Douglass criticizes his audition's pride for a nation that claims to value liberty though it is composed of people who continuously commit atrocities against Blacks. It is said that America is built on the thought of freedom and freedom, merely Douglass tells his audition that more than than anything, it is built on inconsistencies and hypocrisies that have been overlooked for then long they appear to be truths. According to Douglass, these inconsistencies take made the United States the object of mockery and oftentimes antipathy among the diverse nations of the globe.^{[ix] : 346} To prove evidence of these inconsistencies, as ane historian noted, during the speech communication Douglass claims that the United states of america Constitution is an abolitionist document and non a pro-slavery document.^[12] Douglass said:^{[13] [xiv]}

An advert for the occasion of the speech.

Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to exist so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold in that location is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; only, interpreted as 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? or is it in the temple? Information technology is neither.

In this respect, Douglass' views converged with that of Abraham Lincoln'south^[15] in that those politicians who were saying that the Constitution was a justification for their beliefs in regard to slavery were doing so dishonestly.

However, if slavery were abolished and equal rights given to all, that would no longer exist the case. In the end, Douglass wants to keep his hope and religion in humanity high. Douglass declares that true freedom can not exist in America if Black people are however enslaved there and is adamant that the end of slavery is most. Knowledge is becoming more readily available, Douglass said, and soon the American people will open up their optics to the atrocities they accept been inflicting on their swain Americans.

Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the earth. It makes its pathway over and nether the sea, also as on the earth.^{[9] : 346}

Later views on American independence [edit]

The spoken language "What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?" was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. During the Civil War, Douglass said that since Massachusetts had been the first land to join the Patriot cause during the American Revolutionary War, black men should get to Massachusetts to enlist in the Union Army.^[16] Subsequently the Civil War, Douglass said that "we" had accomplished a great matter by gaining American independence during the American Revolutionary State of war, though he said it was not as nifty as what was achieved by the Ceremonious War.^[17]

Legacy [edit]

In the United States, the speech is widely taught in history and English classes in high school and higher.^[6] American studies professor Andrew S. Bibby argues that because many of the editions produced for educational use are abridged, they ofttimes misrepresent Douglass's original through omission or editorial focus.^[6]

A statue of Douglass erected in Rochester in 2018 was torn down on July v, 2020—the 168th ceremony of the speech communication.^{[18] [19]} The head of the organization responsible for the memorial speculated that information technology was vandalized in response to the removal of Confederate monuments in the wake of the George Floyd protests, though there is no show to prove this statement. ^[xx]

Notable readings [edit]

The speech has been notably performed or read by important figures, including the following:

• James Earl Jones^{[half dozen]}
• Morgan Freeman^[6]
• Danny Glover^[6]
• Ossie Davis^{[half dozen]}
• Baratunde Thurston^[21]
• 5 of his descendants^[22]

References [edit]

1. ^ Douglass, Frederick (1852). Frederick Douglass, Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, July 5th, 1852. Rochester: Lee, Isle of mann & Co., 1852. Rochester, NY: Lee, Mann & Co.
2. ^ Douglass, Frederick (July v, 1852). ""What to the Slave is the Quaternary of July?"". Retrieved January 2, 2022.
3. ^ McFeely, William S. (1991). Frederick Douglass . New York: Due west.W. Norton & Company. pp. 172–173. ISBN978-0-393-02823-2.
4. ^ The paragraphing referenced hither is taken from an edition of the speech at RhetoricalGoddess
5. ^ Douglass, Frederick (1982). Blassingame, John Due west. (ed.). The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches Debates, and Interviews. Vol. ii, 1847-54. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 359-387.
6. ^ ^{a b c d eastward f g} Bibby, Andrew S. (July 2, 2014). "'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?': Frederick Douglass's peppery Independence 24-hour interval speech is widely read today, but not so widely understood". Wall Street Journal . Retrieved August xiii, 2015.
7. ^ ^{a b} Heath, Robert 50.; Waymer, Damion (2009). "Activist Public Relations and the Paradox of the Positive: A Example Study of Frederick Douglass's Fourth of July Accost". Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations Ii: 192–215. ISBN9781135220877.
8. ^ Battistoni, Richard. The American Ramble Feel: Selected Readings & Supreme Court Opinions, pp. 66-73 (Kendall Hunt, 2000).
9. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Douglass, Frederick (1852). "Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, July 5, 1852". In Harris, Leonard; Pratt, Scott L.; Waters, Anne S. (eds.). American Philosophies: An Anthology. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell (published 2002). ISBN978-0-631-21002-3.
10. ^ ""What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"". Teaching American History . Retrieved 2021-05-22 .
11. ^ ""What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"". Didactics American History . Retrieved 2021-05-22 .
12. ^ Colaiaco, James A. (March 24, 2015). Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July. St. Martin'south Publishing Grouping. ISBN9781466892781 – via Google Books.
13. ^ "Exceptionalism and the left". Los Angeles Times. December 13, 2010.
14. ^ African Americans In Congress: A Documentary History, by Eric Freedman and Stephen A, Jones, 2008, p. 39
15. ^ Gorski, Philip (February half-dozen, 2017). American Covenant: A History of Civil Organized religion from the Puritans to the Present. Princeton Academy Press. ISBN9781400885008 – via Google Books.
16. ^ Douglass, Frederick. Frederick Douglass on Slavery and the Ceremonious War: Selections from His Writings, p. 46 (Dover Publications, 2014): "Nosotros can go at the throat of treason and slavery through the State of Massachusetts. She was offset in the War of Independence; first to suspension the chains of her slaves; first to make the black man equal earlier the law; first to admit colored children to her common schools, and she was first to answer with her blood the alarm cry of the nation, when its capital was menaced past rebels."
17. ^ Douglass, Frederick. Autobiographies, p. 765 (Library of America, 1994): "It was a dandy thing to achieve American Independence when nosotros numbered iii millions, merely it was a greater thing to save this country from dismemberment and ruin when it numbered 30 millions."
18. ^ Schwartz, Matthew S. (July vi, 2020). "Frederick Douglass Statue Torn Down On Anniversary Of Famous Speech communication". NPR. Archived from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
19. ^ Dark-brown, Deneen L. (July half dozen, 2020). "Frederick Douglass statue torn down in Rochester, N.Y., on ceremony of his famous 4th of July speech". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July seven, 2020.
20. ^ Pengelly, Martin (July half-dozen, 2020). "Frederick Douglass statue torn downwardly on anniversary of great speech". The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020. Speaking to WROC, [Carvin] Eison asked: 'Is this some type of retaliation because of the national fever over Confederate monuments right now? Very disappointing, it's across disappointing.'
21. ^ Thurston, Baratunde (July 4, 2020) [Recorded July 1, 2016]. Baratunde Delivers Us Co-Founder Frederick Douglass 1852 Oral communication: 'What To The Slave Is The 4th of July' . Facebook. Directed past Tara Garver Mikhael. Brooklyn Public Library. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
22. ^ "VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' Descendants Deliver His 'Fourth Of July' Speech". NPR.org . Retrieved 2021-05-22 .

Further reading [edit]

• Bizzell, Patricia (1997-02-01). "The 4th of July and the 22nd of December: The Part of Cultural Archives in Persuasion, every bit Shown by Frederick Douglass and William Apess". College Composition and Communication. 48 (1): 44–60. doi:x.2307/358770. ISSN 0010-096X. JSTOR 358770.
• Douglass, Frederick. A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1845.
• Douglass, Frederick, ed. Stauffer, John. Random Firm. 2003. My Bondage and My Freedom: Office I - Life as a Slave, Part Ii - Life as a Freeman, with an introduction past James McCune Smith. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan. 1855.
• Gates, Jr. Henry Louis, ed. Frederick Douglass, Autobiography. New York: Library of America. 1994.
• Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Visitor, Inc. 2007.

External links [edit]

• Frederick Douglass' Descendants Deliver His 'Fourth of July' Speech (video)
• Offset edition of the publication of Douglass' speech
• Give-and-take of the pamphlet from The Public Domain Review
• What to the Slave Is the 4th of July? public domain audiobook at LibriVox

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_the_Slave_Is_the_Fourth_of_July%3F

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