Rhetorical Analysis Of What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July

The speech that I chose to dive into was one spoken by Frederick Douglas titled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.” Frederick Douglas was a man who escaped slavery and lead many in abolition of slavery movement. He was known for his exceptional public speaking skills and writing about the horrors of slavery. Douglas was so educated in the way he wrote and spoke that many found it difficult he once came from a life of slavery. When he was asked to speak on the Fourth of July in 1852, he unloaded the wrongfulness in slavery. Coming from slavery himself, he despised the Fugitive Slave Law for the simple fact that slavery “has no right to exist anywhere.” I find a critical part of his speech, is the attention getting device. Since this speech was given on the Fourth of July, Douglas starts off his speech by sharing gratitude for our nation’s founding fathers.

use of ethos). However, as the as the speech continued, Douglas began to call out American on its hippocratic beliefs and muddied systems. Since the audience was engaged by his moving words about our countries past leaders, he was able to hold on to the audience’s attention. Douglas’s rhetorical question “Are the great principle of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” expresses what the speech is truly about. He continues to push his argument by stating that blacks are forced into celebrating a “white man’s” freedom. The whole idea being that how can everyone stand around celebrating freedom, when the country uses slavery? Douglas bashes America for being unrealistic and turning a blind eye to the matters before