What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? | Rhetorical Analysis

“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” is among the most well-known speeches by Frederick Douglass and among the most famous speeches in the American rhetorical tradition. It was delivered on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at an event hosted by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. The speech is fiery and represents a moral condemnation of the US as a supposedly democratic and free society that tolerated the existence of African American slavery. 

Frederick Douglass relies heavily on traditional rhetorical devices such as erotema (or rhetorical questions) and isocolon or parallel structure to make his point. The Fourth of July marks the celebration of American (U.S.A.) independence from the colonial rule of Great Britain. To understand the significance of the speech, we should briefly examine who exactly was Frederick Douglass. 

Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–1895) was many things. He was born a slave in the state of Marlyand and gained his freedom by running away in 1838. He became a prominent 19th-century American abolitionist, orator, and writer. He also wrote his autobiography, entitled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (published in 1845), and served as an advisor to President Lincoln.

Frederick Douglass’s speech sought to confront Americans with the hypocrisy and irony of celebrating their supposed independence from a tyrannical power while depriving a large portion of their population — American Blacks — of their freedom. In this article, we examine the political context of the speech, its organization, its numerous rhetorical devices, and why it is effective as rhetorical writing. 

The rhetorical approach of the speech 

The main rhetorical approach used in “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” is mostly pathos, or an appeal to emotion. Douglass pours biting sarcasm on the idea of the United States embodying the ideals of democracy and freedom. Even the name of the speech — What to the slave is the Fourth of July — points out the irony of the US celebrating its own War of Independence while still keeping slaves. 

This biting sarcasm and irony are shown in his condemnation of the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1850, which allowed slaves who escaped to the North of the United States to be captured and sent back to the South: 

Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, hear only his accusers! 

This is effective because of the way in which it uses asyndeton (or the lack of conjunctions) to highlight a long list of the supposedly Republican values of a country where judges rule in favor of men being deprived of their liberty. Frederick Douglass here in pouring unadulterated scorn on the hypocrisy of the United States.

Despite relying primarily on pathos, Frederick Douglass's references to his life and experience as a slave can also be counted as ethos, that is, the appeal to authority. His personal experience of slavery in that regard gave him the authority to speak on the horrors of slavery. More importantly, he also relies on logos — or an appeal to logic and reason. This can be seen, for example, in his rejection of the need to even argue whether or not slavery is justified: 

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans?  …There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. 

As far as he is concerned, the evil of slavery is a self-evident fact that does not require any argument. Instead, he believes that what is required is moral condemnation and a struggle against the wrong of slavery. This he does by focusing on criticizing the legal institutions of the United States, as well as the church for not being sufficiently strong in its condemnation of American slavery. 

Rhetorical devices used in “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

The main rhetorical deviceused in the speech is erotema or rhetorical questions. However, there are plenty other traditional rhetorical devices and figures of speech used. There are plenty of allusions — both literary and Biblical allusions. For example, in pointing out that George Washington is remembered as a man who owned slaves, he makes a literary allusion by quoting Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar: 

The evil that men do, lives after them,

The good is oft’ interred with their bones. (Act 3, Scene 2)

He uses several Biblical allusions. One of the more striking ones is a reference to Psalm 137, which is written from the perspective of Jews lamenting their capture and exile from Israel by the Babylonians. Douglass portrays this as a parallel to African-Americans captured from Africa and slavaved in the US:

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 my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" 

However, Douglass excels in traditional rhetorical devices. The following tables below provide several examples of the various rhetorical devices taht he uses. 

Repetitive rhetorical devices. Repetitive rhetorical devices add emphasis and establish a rhythm. For example, anaphora is repetition at the beginning of a phrase and epistrophe is repetition at the ending of a phrase. 

Rhetorical Device	Definition	Example
Anaphora	Repetition at the start	With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final; welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines!
Epistrophe	Repetition at the end	The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.
Symploce	Repetition at the beginning and end, with a small change in the middle	I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered . . . Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke   less,
Polyptoton	Repetition of the root with a different ending.	They that can, may; I cannot . . . which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on.

Structure-based rhetorical devices. These work by maintaining, enhancing, or changing the normal structure of a phrase, sentence, or utterance. For example, isocolon maintains a parallel structure for phrases or sentences that are in succession, whereas chiasmus repeats elements but reverses their structure.

Rhetorical Device	Definition	Example
Isocolon	Words, phrases, or sentences arranged in parallel structure	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 heartless. . .
Chiasmus	Repeating elements with their structure reversed	They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you "hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. . .”
Anastrophe	Inversion of words	What to the slave is the Fourth of July?
Ellipsis	Leaving out words	For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
Polysyndeton	Using extra conjunctions	You live and must die, and you must do your work.
Asyndeton	Leaving out conjunctions	What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to bum their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America . . .

Dramatic rhetorical devices. These figures of speech focus on encouraging the audience to participate or making a show of allowing the audience to participate. The most famous example would be erotema or rhetorical questions, which Douglass uses quite effectively throughout the speech to emphasize the irony and pour sarcastic scorn on a democratic US holding slaves. Erotema gives the audience the impression that you are engaging them in the speech. 

Rhetorical device	Definition	Example
Praeteritio	Saying things without saying them	O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.
Metanoia	Correcting oneself	And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind.
Litotes	Rhetorical use of the negative through understatement	Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise
Erotema	Rhetorical questions	What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit?
Hypophora	Asking questions and answering them	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 cruelly to which he is the constant victim
Prolepsis	Anticipating questions and meeting them.	But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued.

The legacy of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” 

Frederick Douglass predicted a tradition of Black or African-American rhetoric, which inspired the likes of Martin Luther King. For example, there is much similarity between the Biblical allusion and the sense of Godly and righteous retribution in  MLK’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”  For example, Dr. King quoted Isaiah 40:4 when he said: 

. . . every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight

Here, King is comparing equality for Blacks in the Civil Rights era to the Second Coming of God, who will pass judgment and achieve equality through mystical and calamitous events. It is highly metaphorical language. And King may have well gotten the idea from Douglass's speech.

For example, the apocalyptic imagery used by King and the call for righteous wrath is similar to Douglass’s claim that to condemn slavery (or “crimes against God"): “ [I]t is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” However, King doesn’t come close to the level of sarcastic scorn that Frederick Douglass delivers when he questions the values of American Republicanism. Here is Douglass comparing the impetus for Americans to gain their freedom from the British to America’s ill treatment of Black laborers: 

You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country.

This is the major highlight of Frederick Douglass's speech: exposing the massive gap between the stated Republican ideals and values of the United States, with its immoral treatment of African Americans. This mocking of hypocrisy and pointing out of irony is reflected in Malcolm X’s famous Ballot or the Bullet speech, where he quotes a founding father — Patrick Henry — who also owned slaves.  Patrick Henry, in his opposition to British colonial rule, gave the famous speech “Give me liberty or give me death.” X paraphrases it as “It'll be the ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death” while advocating for equal rights for Black Americans by any means necessary.

---

Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2026, January 28). What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? | Rhetorical Analysis.  EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july-rhetorical-analysis