What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

by

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Character Analysis

Frederick Douglass was an orator and abolitionist who became famous for his incisive anti-slavery speeches. In “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”, Douglass offers a criticism of the eponymous holiday after being invited to speak in celebration of it by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. After reading the Declaration of Independence for his audience, Douglass delves into the speech, where he contrasts the Declaration of Independence’s ideals with the cruel oppression of pro-slavery institutions. Douglass argues that, because of this dissonance, the Fourth of July for slaves is simply a reminder of the freedom withheld from them. Douglass also brings his own personal experience into the speech, describing his experience as a young slave when he would hear the agonized cries of slaves being driven in the middle of the night. Because of his own painful past as a slave, Douglass also states that he does not feel included in the Fourth of July and even expresses offense that the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society would be insensitive enough to invite him to celebrate such a day. However, despite his bitterness towards America’s hypocrisy in celebrating the Fourth of July, Douglass expresses hope for America’s future due to his faith in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He urges Americans to live up to the ideals in these documents in order to free the oppressed and turn America into a truly honorable country.

Frederick Douglass Quotes in What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

The What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? quotes below are all either spoken by Frederick Douglass or refer to Frederick Douglass. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Liberty vs. Slavery Theme Icon
).
Introduction Quotes

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), The Founding Fathers
Page Number: 61
Explanation and Analysis:

There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Related Symbols: Water
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
1. The Present Quotes

I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of the glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of 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. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting 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 whirlwind, 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 of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Related Symbols: Water
Page Number: 71-72
Explanation and Analysis:

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 constant victim.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
2. The Internal Slave Trade Quotes

You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. … You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. … Mark the sad process, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! Weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn!

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 73-74
Explanation and Analysis:

The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. 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, to hear only his accusers!

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:

This trade is one of the peculiarities of the American institutions. … It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave-trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. … It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:
3. Religious Liberty Quotes

The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. … A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), Pro-Slavery Ministers
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
4. The Church Responsible Quotes

Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), Pro-Slavery Ministers
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done!

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), Pro-Slavery Ministers
Page Number: 80
Explanation and Analysis:

In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry, but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), Pro-Slavery Ministers
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
5. Religion in England and Religion in America Quotes

[In England], the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a high[ly] religious question. … The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting the movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 84-85
Explanation and Analysis:
6. The Constitution Quotes

I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and the propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 89
Explanation and Analysis:
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Frederick Douglass Quotes in What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

The What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? quotes below are all either spoken by Frederick Douglass or refer to Frederick Douglass. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Liberty vs. Slavery Theme Icon
).
Introduction Quotes

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), The Founding Fathers
Page Number: 61
Explanation and Analysis:

There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Related Symbols: Water
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
1. The Present Quotes

I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of the glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of 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. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting 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 whirlwind, 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 of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Related Symbols: Water
Page Number: 71-72
Explanation and Analysis:

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 constant victim.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
2. The Internal Slave Trade Quotes

You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. … You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. … Mark the sad process, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! Weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn!

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 73-74
Explanation and Analysis:

The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. 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, to hear only his accusers!

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:

This trade is one of the peculiarities of the American institutions. … It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave-trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. … It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:
3. Religious Liberty Quotes

The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. … A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), Pro-Slavery Ministers
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
4. The Church Responsible Quotes

Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), Pro-Slavery Ministers
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done!

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), Pro-Slavery Ministers
Page Number: 80
Explanation and Analysis:

In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry, but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker), Pro-Slavery Ministers
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
5. Religion in England and Religion in America Quotes

[In England], the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a high[ly] religious question. … The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting the movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 84-85
Explanation and Analysis:
6. The Constitution Quotes

I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and the propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman.

Related Characters: Frederick Douglass (speaker)
Page Number: 89
Explanation and Analysis: