The Will of a People: A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches

Frederick Douglass

49 Frederick Douglass What to the American Slave Is the Fourth of July? There was not a more famous or more eloquent African American abolitionist than Frederick Douglass. Born a slave, the unacknowledged son of an unknown white father and an African American mother in Maryland, Douglass found his voice as an abolitionist and advocate of the equal rights of African Americans in Baltimore. He listened to and participated in debates among free blacks in the city, becoming a member of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. At the age of twelve he had read Caleb Bingham’s The Columbian Orator, a collection of patriotic works including essays and dialogues, used in school rooms early in the nineteenth century to develop literacy and an appreciation of eloquence and the importance of public discourse in a free republic. Bingham’s book, which Douglass devoured soon after he had taught himself to read, had a profound and lasting impact upon him. Bingham particularly emphasized that speakers should employ a natural style of language and delivery, and he preached the importance of combining eloquence with content that merited eloquence, for example, the idea and ideal of liberty.1 As an abolitionist orator, Douglass initially aligned himself with the radical views of William Lloyd Garrison, who claimed that the US Constitution immorally supported slavery and that slaves should be immediately emancipated.2 Garrison ultimately came to believe that the only solution was disunion and secession.3 The Garrison­ ians made significant inroads in persuading the American public of the immorality of slavery, but Douglass broke with the Garrisonians in 1847, although initially he continued to support their view of the Constitution. By 1850, Douglass thought differently, preferring to see the Constitution Frederick Douglass 50 as embodying tenets of equality that, if properly interpreted, would lead Americans to abandon slavery.4 As an orator, Douglass quickly became a celebrity. The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society hired him as a paid lecturer, a position he held from 1841 until 1845. Abolitionists understood that life stories of fugitive slaves made compelling and credible persuasive appeals. Among the African American speakers who satisfied the public interest in the life of the slave, the uncommonly literate and eloquent Douglass rose to stardom. Early in his speaking career, he was particularly known for his “Slaveholder’s Sermon,” a scathing parody of white ministers’ preaching to the plantation slaves.5 So literate was Douglass, that rumors circulated that he was an imposter; such an educated speaker could not be a fugitive slave. To establish his bona fides, he published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845. His increased fame brought increased danger that bounty hunters would seize him and return him to slavery, however, so Douglass sailed to Britain and, until 1847, lectured across the British Isles. He returned to the United States after reluctantly allowing British supporters to purchase his freedom so that he could continue his abolition work in America itself. A career as an editor and journalist followed, with publications such as North Star, Frederick Douglass’s Paper, Douglass Monthly, and New National Era. The issues that concerned Douglass encompassed not only abolition but woman’s rights, temperance, peace, and capital punishment.6 Douglass delivered “What to the American Slave is the Fourth of July?” as part of an 1852 Independence Day celebration at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, the city where he had taken up residence after his return from Britain. The Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society invited Douglass to deliver the main address, and Douglass wished to speak on July 5, following a tradition in the New York State African American community . The audience was comprised of six hundred people who had paid the ticket price of twelve and a half cents each, the equivalent of $3.20 in current dollars.7 Since many in Douglass’s mostly white, immediate audience were abolitionists such as himself, in large measure he was “preaching to the choir.” Among Garrisonian abolitionists, though, his antislavery interpretation of the Constitution would have been controversial. Before Douglass took the podium to address his audience, a clergyman first read the Declaration of Independence.8 Douglass’s speech, subdued and circumspect at the outset, abruptly turns to mordant criticism of the nation and, apparently, of his ­ audience: “America is false to the past, false to the What to the American Slave Is the Fourth of July? 51 present, and solemnly...