Read the following excerpts from Frederick Douglass' text "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?" and answer the question that follows.
Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intole
the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may
my right hand forget her cunning, and may
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous
and
and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its
popular characteristics from
the
point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the
character and conduct
nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of
the present, the conduct of the nation
s
equally hideous and revolting. America vis false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
Standing
with
God and the crushed an
bleeding slave on this occasion, 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 whie
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
shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose jo
is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just...
... At a time like this, scorching irony, hot convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of b
ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the w
and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy
nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the
victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartles
denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all y
religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savag
In a well-written paragraph of 7-10 sentences, identify and evaluate Douglass' use of two rhetorical devices and one rhetorical appeal.
