Blog Post #1

After reading "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"

1) What would we expect from a Fourth of July speech? How does Douglass meet our expectations or challenge them?

I expect a Fourth of July speech to appeal to the audience in patriotic yet simple terms, engaging them in celebration and unity. Douglass challenged my expectations from the beginning by talking about his “quailing sensation”, freely admitting to his nervousness and lack of confidence in his own speaking skills. Many speakers strive to appear more important than they are, and perhaps in an effort to engage his audience’s sympathies, Douglass rather shows he is not an important figure, but merely human. One of the things that struck me was that he would not use the term “us” “our” or “we” as Lincoln did in the Gettysburg Address, but rather distanced himself from the audience by using “you” and “I” (“You may rejoice, I must mourn.”) and also emphasizing the differences between his origins and where he is now standing. The speech was also surprising in that it was more of an ironic scolding, shame-on-you type of speech rather than of a celebration, a speech that you would likely find at a abolitionist gathering rather than on Fourth of July. However, Fourth of July does not free slaves nor abolish slavery, even for a day. Douglass points out that to slaves, the Fourth of July is not a celebration but rather an ironic reminder of the constant injustice they are subjected to in this country. His speech seems to use the following variation: hope-reflection-indignation-irony-hope, and perhaps it is not surprising that he ends on hope, rather than depression or anger, because this emphasizes his point all the more.

2) Is the speech devoted more to praise or blame? What is the rhetorical purpose of the praise and blame? How does it appeal to the audience?

This speech is more devoted to blame than praise. He praises the Founding Fathers and early Americans’ bravery in the face of tyranny, but he also uses irony in comparing them to America today (“tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America… filled with judges who… in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, hear only his accusers!”). In my opinion, the purpose of his doing so is to rile up the audience while on the other hand shaming them for their actions and beliefs. Douglass refers to the course of America’s own independence, and argues that while in hindsight everyone knows which side they should take, at the time it was not so. It took courage to side with the weak against the strong while change could still be made, and he argues that America was born because of this courage. He appeals to his audience, asking them to root for the underdog, while retaining a patriotic note.