Transcript Revolutionary Rhetoric IV

Declarations in Dialogue
Frederick Douglass,“What to the Slave is the
Fourth of July?”
REFORM? OR SOMETHING MORE
Are Enlightenment promises of equality and liberty best pursued using the
language/framework of rights and citizenship within the nation, or is a more
expansive language and vision required?
“Declaration of Sentiments”:
“We insist that [women] have immediate admission to all the rights and
privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.” (249)
“Whereas, The great precept of nature is conceded to be that “man shall
pursue his own true and substantial happiness.” Blackstone in his
Commentaries remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind,
and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other.
It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times; no human laws
are of any validity if contrary to this . . . “ (249)
Douglass, “What to the Slave . . .?”
Delivered July 5th, 1852 - Corinthian Hall
Rochester, New York
•At the invitation of the Rochester Ladies’ Antislavery Society of Rochester
•500-600 people, 12 1/2 cents each
•FD letter to Gerrit Smith: 2-3 weeks of preparation (cf. opening: “no
elaborate preparation”; “I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and
imperfectly together”)
•Prayer; reading of the Declaration; speech; “universal burst of applause”
John W. Blassingame, ed. The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series One. Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. Vol. 2. 1847-54.
New Haven: Yale UP, 1982. 359-88.
Points of reference
•1776: the denial of slavery in the newly formed United States
•1805: the independence of Haiti won by an insurgent slave population
Slavery in the U.S. in 1852:
•Approximately 600,000 Africans shipped as slaves to the US from 16 th19th centuries
•Slave and free states divided by the Mason-Dixon Line
•Import/export of slaves criminalized in 1808, but internal slave trade
was active
•1860 US census: 4 million slaves
•Slave rebellions: Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, South Carolina – 182030s
•Abolitionist movement: William Garrison, the Grimke sisters – 1830s
•1850 Fugitive Slave Act
FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT, 1850
• strengthened 1793 law
• officials who do not arrest
runaway slaves are fined
• fines levied against those who
assisted runaway slaves
• no requirement of trial; slave
owners need only supply an
affidavit to capture an escaped
slave
• free blacks could be conscripted
into slavery
• no rights in court: no right to
demand jury trial or to testify
DOUGLASS: BRIEF BIO
(BLIGHT 173-78)
1818, born into slavery in Talbot Co.,
Maryland
1847, returns to U.S.; settles in
Rochester, NY; starts a newspaper,
1838, escapes from slavery, settles in North Star
New Bedford, MA; renames himself 1848, where is FD in July of 1848?
1841, hired as a lecturer by abolitionist 1850, breaks with Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
1852, Fourth of July speech
1845, publication of his first
autobiography – Narrative
1845-47, travels and lectures in the
British Isles
CIRCULATION
Request for publication in
pamphlet form
700 “subscriptions” on
the occasion
Published in Frederick
Douglass’ Paper (formerly
the North Star), 9 July
1852. Issue 29, col. D:
“The Celebration at
Corinthian Hall”
SPEECH GENRES
From Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Ancient Greek; 4thC BCE)
Epideictic (ceremonial): speeches of praise or blame; concerns the present
some related categories: inaugural address, convocation and
graduation speeches, commemoration speeches (MLK Day; 9/11
anniversary) – confirms group values
Forensic (legal): speeches presented in court; concerns the past; judicial
decision
Deliberative (political): speeches presented in the assembly; concerns the
future; policy formation
“Douglass the ironist”
Expectations:
• self-congratulation on the nation’s “birthday”: emphasis on praise
• personal narrative from an escaped slave: an account of suffering, at attitude of
humility, to gain sympathy?
What Douglass offers: a series of refusals –
• a refusal to praise Americans for their achievement: “as a people, Americans are
remarkably familiar with all the fact which make in their own favor” (154; 366)
• a refusal to place himself among “Americans”: “Why am I called upon to speak
here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national
independence?” (155; 367)
• a refusal to argue for abolition: “At a time like this, scorching irony, not
convincing argument is needed” (158; 371)
But given D’s wide renown as an abolitionist speaker, and other traditions (sermonic
rhetoric, including the jeremiad--a bitter lament; a righteous prophecy of
doom), perhaps D’s audience was more prepared than contemporary readers
for ironies of stance, (non)argument, and tone
THE STRUCTURE OF THE SPEECH
[Exordium] (148; 359)
The Present (154; 366)
The Internal Slave Trade (159; 371)
Religious Liberty (163; 376)
The Church Responsible (164; 377)
Religion in England and Religion in America 166; 381)
The Constitution (168; 384)
EXORDIUM=INTRODUCTION, A CALL TO
ATTEND
Douglass: I won’t “grace my
speech with any high sounding
exordium” (148; 360).
Little learning
Modesty - a convention
Distance: “between this platform
and the slave plantation, from
which I escaped” (148; 360)
“your National Independence”
Several levels of distance
established
“the point from which I am
compelled to view [the founding
fathers] is not, certainly the most
favorable” (152; 364)
“A simple story” (149-56)
•instead of praising the accomplishment of a nation, D. marks the childhood
of the Republic of America: “Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart
might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier” (149; 360)
• hope (a topos – theme or commonplace): “hope is much needed, under the
dark clouds which lower above the horizon” (149; 360)
•geological time: analogy of nation to river (149; 361)
•emphasis on men and their actions in the face of oppression than a focus
on principles: “To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak
against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the
merit” (150; 362)
“They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful
submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from
agitating against oppression . . . With them justice, liberty, and humanity were
“final;” not slavery and oppression.” (153; 364-65)
Overlays an abolitionist rhetoric onto the revolutionary narrative
From “simple story” to precarious
chain of destiny
• Douglass cites a July 2 nd resolution rather than the July 4 th Declaration: the act
of political dissolution (151; 363)
• future direction: “Just here . . . was a startling idea born” (151; 362): an
“alarming and revolutionary idea”; he focuses on the dangerous and
powerful
character of the founding fathers’ actions
• an incomplete project: “The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s
history--the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped
destiny” (152; 363-64).
• “That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost” (152; 364): the ship of
state
imperiled: crisis
• “Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in
strength into the distant future” (153; 365)
Figures of speech: river, ship, corner-stone
A SENTENCE LIKE A CORNERSTONE: STYLISTIC
TOUR DE FORCE, SINCERE APPRECIATION, OR
ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY FOR IRONY?
“Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered,
firmly believing in the right of their cause,
honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world,
reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity,
soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume
wisely measuring the terrible odds against them,
your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the
inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great
principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone, of the national
superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.” (153;
365)
Imagine yourself as a member of Douglass’
audience
Near the end of the first section of the speech, Douglass writes, “Citizens,
your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap
the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore,
may properly celebrate this anniversary” (151; 363), and “Fellow citizens, I am
not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic” (152; 364).
What is your response?
A.Douglass truly values the achievements of the founding fathers.
B.Douglass does not embrace Enlightenment ideals of equality and rights.
C.Douglass’ ethos and tone make me uneasy.
D.All of the above
E.Some of the above
THE PRESENT: FROM STATIC
EDIFICE TO STORM-TOSSED SHIP
OF STATE
“ My business is with the present . . . the ever-living
now”
“Now is the time, the important time” “ You must
live and must die, and you must do your work.
“You have no right to wear out and waste the hardearned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence”
(154; 366).
Washington’s monument built “by the price of
human blood,” yet Washington “broke the chains”
of his slaves (155; 367).
Enlightenment principles performed rather than
asserted
ETHOS: SHARP REMINDERS
OF DISTANCE/DIVISION
• Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why I am called upon to speak here today?
What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great
principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of
Independence, extended to us? And am I therefore, called upon to bring our humble
offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude
for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?” (155; 367)
“sad sense of disparity between us”; “immeasurable distance”
“By the rivers of Babylon . . .” (156; 368) -- Psalms 137: 1-6:
the captive forced to sing
Another bond, another system of values: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand
forget her cunning.”
 Douglass’s performance is not the command performance of the captive but an act of
political freedom
FROM FAINT PRAISE TO DENUNCIATION:
EPIDEICTIC SPEECH BECOMES
DELIBERATIVE (157-69)
 “My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day,
and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view.” (156; 368): a
refusal of the stance of disinteredness
 “America is false to the past . . . present . . . and future” (156; 369) – apocalyptic
sense of time; no hope
 “Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave . . ., I will in the name of
humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name
of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare
to 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!”
(156-57; 369)
 “But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say . . . argue more, denounce less;
persuade more, rebuke less . . . Where all is plain there is nothing to be argued.”
(157; 369)
WHAT DOES NOT NEED
TO BE ARGUED:
1. The slave is a man:
legal evidence, but-“It is enough to affirm the manhood of the negro race”: “We” are
ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical
tools . . . (157; 370) The evidence of manhood and action rather
than law and equality
2. The slave owns his (her?) body – “You have already declared it.” How
should I look . . . Dividing, and subdividing a discourse to show that men
have a“natural right to freedom”; it does not need the devices of
argument. “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does
not know that slavery is wrong for him” (158; 370).
Douglass ridicules the modes of reasoning and argument, the relatively
decorous rhetoric of the Declaration
(Non)Argument cont. – Internal Slave Trade;
religious liberty
1. “Behold” - enargeia: bringing vividly before the eyes;
human as animal (horse, sheep, swine) (160; 372-73)
Douglass’ narrative: Why here? Young Fred as an
observer. His mistress sympathized with him in his
horror (160-61; 374)
2. Fugitive Slave Law (162; 375); “religious liberty” - the
fusion of religious and civic identities
The law as a “declaration of war”: religion as “an
empty ceremony, and not a vital principle requiring active
benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man”
(163; 377).
COMPARATIVE RELIGION, THE
DECLARATION APPEARS
3. The church as bulwark of slavery: criticism of Northern ministers who
teach that “we ought to obey man’s law before the law of God” (164ff; 377ff).
You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a
threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the
grasp of the black laborers of your country” (167; 383)
“You profess to believe ‘that of one blood, God made all nations of men to
dwell on the face of the earth’” (Acts 17:26)
You “holds these truths . . .” and yet, you hold in bondage … (167; 383)
4. “National inconsistency”: “The existence of slavery in this country brands
your Republicanism . . . a sham, your humanity . . . a base pretense, your
Christianity . . . a lie” 167; (383)
CONSTITUTION
The Constitution as a “glorious liberation document” (168; 384)
Garrison’s position: abolitionists should not vote because America’s
government was pro-slavery; rejection of a corrupt political process;
freedom in the north for blacks did not grant voting rights
Douglass, 1851: refusing to pursue the vote is acquiescing in
discrimination; joined the Liberty and Free Soil parties to get emancipation
before major political leaders; the oppressed should participate in the
political process
PERORATION (169-71; 386-88)
D. still has hope for the country: drawing
encouragement from the Declaration of Independence
in the context of internationalism
“walled cities and empires have become
unfashionable” (170; 387)
Ethiopianism -- an Africanist African-American
philosophy
Garrisonian sentiments: bonds across division
within abolitionist movement
CONCLUSIONS
While Enlightenment principles clearly inform Douglass’ speech and the
abolition movement, D. pointedly delay the restatement of the general
claims of the 1776 Declaration, places them in a skeptical context, and
rejects Enlightenment rhetoric: “O! had I the ability . . . I would, to-day,
pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering
sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire” (158;
371)
The rhetorical action of a social movement: “The feeling of the nation
must be quickened [roused, startled, exposed,] “crimes against God and
man must be proclaimed and denounced”
From subject to citizen to “men and women” to humanity/manhood: who
will count as “man”?
From nation of patriots to a global project for freedom: beyond the 1776
Declaration