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The Meaning Of July Fourth For The Negro, By Frederick Douglass Analysis

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Countless people today would agree that the institution of slavery, which was once established and permitted in the United States of America, was a disgraceful one. For many today, it is easy to contend that slavery was wrong merely because one should not enslave another person. Those that lived in the antebellum period that argued against slavery had a harder time debating just that. Abolitionists, orators, and the slaves themselves had to form a formidable argument against the institution of slavery in order to gain any ground in the fight to bring it to an end. They needed a way to argue that slavery went against what Southerners believed in, which was found in American principles. Even though abolitionists used moral arguments, appealing to the principles on which the United States was founded was the greatest aid to those who opposed slavery.
Those who argued that slavery was immoral on the basis of it being wrong to enslave another still conveyed powerful messages, but their arguments were missing an essential piece. Solomon Northup argued against slavery in a way that few could challenge. …show more content…
Being far more experienced than he was at the beginning of his career, Douglass argued against slavery in a different way. He asserted that there was something unjust in inviting African Americans to join any Fourth of July celebrations. He craftily made it clear that the Fourth of July did indeed symbolize a momentous victory, but slavery was eroding that victory. Douglass recognized the parallel between the strife of the nation’s founding fathers and made it seem identical to the strife of African Americans. This made his arguments far more daunting than

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