What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July Analysis

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The use of rhetorical strategies in the speech, ‘‘What To The Slave Is The 4th Of July?’’ written by former slave Frederick Douglass in 1852, strengthens the argument that slavery is unjust and inhumane. He uses appeals to emotion and many examples of figurative language to persuade the audience to believe what he is saying is important and should be solved right away. Douglass uses pathos and logos appeals to exhaust the idea that slavery is wrong and America isn’t taking this matter serious. In paragraph 1, he writes “He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I do. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day,” to illustrate the feeling of honor and make himself come off as knowledgeable which proves his credibility using ethos appeals. He uses parallelism in paragraph 39 to establish a rhythm that hits the audience’s emotions which is another example of pathos appeals when he repeats the …show more content…
He uses irony by being a man once without freedom speaking to an audience about slaves who deserve freedom on July 4th which is a day that celebrates freedom and liberty. The short paragraphs that follow question 14 prove that both American republic political and republic religion were inconsistent but shows how slavery was never among the nation’s list of worries. He ends the paragraph with a quote from the Founding Fathers to show how they have gone against Thomas Jefferson’s words of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Douglass uses the analogy of a gateway: the preamble and the temple: the body of the Constitution to address a powerful justification that slavery is not okay and the belief is protected by the Constitution which people need to
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was considered radical, extreme, and dangerous. In “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”, Frederick Douglass wanted to convince people of the wrongfulness of slavery and also to make an argument for the abolition of slavery to Northern whites. At the invitation of the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, Frederick Douglass delivered this speech on July 5, 1852 in Rochester, New York (Faigley 351). Frederick Douglass was a former slave, so he was able to share first-hand experiences and was…

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