Rhetorical Analysis Of Frederick Douglass Speech During The Fourth Of July

Frederick Douglass once stated that he “did not know [he] was a slave until [he] found out [he] couldn’t do the things [he] wanted” (2012). Slavery once held this man captive until he was able to escape and become “free.” Although he was able to do this, he still was never truly free, for he was a black man in America when the Fugitive Slave Act was still in place. He was asked to speak during a Fourth of July celebration held by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in 1852. Because it was a friendly audience, he used this platform in order to point out the irony of the holiday and sway people to become pro-abolition. Through distancing himself from the audience and shifting from praise to blame, Douglass exposes, during a Fourth of July …show more content…
Towards the end of his speech he becomes aggressive and passionate about the topic. This shift in his speech is most likely one that the audience did not expect when they asked if he would speak. He urges the people to think about just how unjust it is that they are not treated as true citizens. “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” (Douglass, 123). This is another example of his use of rhetoric to get his point across.
Douglass begins his speech with praise for the country and speaks with a cheerful attitude, which made the shift in his tone at the end all the more powerful. He wants the audience to consider just how hypocritical the Fourth of July holiday was at the time. His shift in tone, use of rhetoric, and distance from the audience establishes this hypocrisy and showed just how eloquent and persuasive he could be with his words. Douglass wanted them to know that just because the country has freedom does not mean that all are