What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Study Guide

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Cordova, Maryland, sometime in the late 1810s; though he did not know his exact birthdate, he chose to celebrate his birthday on February 14 due to his mother’s nickname of “Little Valentine” for him. Many people believed that his father was his mother’s enslaver, but he was never able to verify this. Douglass grew up on a plantation but was eventually sent to Baltimore, where he served Hugh Auld and his wife Sophia. Sophia was initially kind to Douglass and even educated him; although she eventually caved to her husband’s influence and stopped doing so, Douglass continued to teach himself to read and write in secret. The materials he read helped form his political opinions as well as introduce him to Christianity, which he converted to. In 1837, Douglass escaped slavery thanks to the influence of Anna Murray, a free woman he had fallen in love with. The two married and initially settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Douglass began to build his career as a preacher, orator, and abolitionist. As time went on, he built a reputation among abolitionists for his strong rhetoric skills, and he performed many influential speeches throughout his life. While he was most well-known for his abolitionist work, he was also active in the women’s rights movement and advocated for women’s suffrage. Douglass died of a heart attack on February 20, 1895, having lived to see his own freedom along with the freedom of millions of other slaves. His funeral was attended by thousands of people.

Frederick Douglass was one of the most prominent figures of the American abolitionist movement, which was active in the 19th century. Although anti-slavery ideologies had existed well before the 1800s, abolitionism as an established movement gained significant traction in the North around the 1830s. Before this point, many people had advocated for the gradual end of slavery; however, the increasing visibility of the domestic slave trade in all its horrors led to increased demands for immediate emancipation for slaves. The movement was first named in 1831, when William Lloyd Garrison published his first issue of his abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. The 1850s in particular were a difficult time for abolitionists due to the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. This law, which Douglass extensively criticizes in his speech, outlawed efforts to aid freed slaves, thus jeopardizing abolitionist efforts such as the Underground Railroad. Even so, abolitionists defied this law and continued to help escaped slaves to freedom despite the constant threat of lynch mob violence by anti-abolitionists. This violent tension ultimately culminated in the Civil War, which began in 1861 when Southern states seceded from the Union in order to preserve slavery amidst Union efforts to legally abolish slavery.

At the end of his speech, Douglass quotes a poem by William Lloyd Garrison, an abolitionist that he was quite close to at the time of the speech’s performance. Douglass’s pro-Constitution argument in “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” is an interesting contrast to Garrison’s belief that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document. In his 1832 article “The Great Crisis!”, Garrison called the Constitution “a compact formed at the sacrifice of the bodies and souls of millions of our race, for the sake of achieving a political object—an unblushing and monstrous coalition to do evil that good might come.” Interestingly, Douglass initially agreed with Garrison’s critical interpretation of the Constitution, but the two’s friendship fell apart when Douglass changed his mind; in 1860, Douglass delivered the speech “The Constitution: Is it Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery?”, which was a direct and rather personal response to Garrison’s criticism of Douglass’s softening view on the Constitution. Although “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” frames the question of the Constitution’s stance on slavery as a simple one, Douglass and Garrison’s falling out highlights how the moral character of the Constitution was fiercely debated during the height of the abolition movement.