American Literature

Unit V: Background Readings

The Gettysburg Address - Abraham Lincoln

A speech on the Occassion of the Dedication of the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863

● America concieved as a collection of 13 states - a new nation in 1776 - dedicated to the proposal that all
men are equal
● Backdrop of a civil war - a testing of endurance - a dedication of the battle field as a final resting place for
those who gave their lives so that America could live
○ Not an attemot to consecrate or hallow the ground - the consecration has been done by the brave
men both iving and dead - we don’t have enough power to add to it or detract it
○ The world might not remember the speeches and words made but will remember the actions of the
men
○ Duty to continue with the unfinished work of theirs
● Remaining task:
○ that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave
the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have
died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

● The Gettysburg Address is a speech that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American
Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, now known as Gettysburg National
Cemetery, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, four and a half months
after the Union armies defeated Confederate forces in the Battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War's deadliest
battle. It remains one of the best known speeches in American history.
● One of the most influential addresses - “four score and seven years later” : reference to the Declaration of
Independence in 1776
● Following the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1–3, 1863, the removal of the fallen Union soldiers from the
Gettysburg Battlefield graves and their reburial in graves at the National Cemetery at Gettysburg began on
October 17, though on the day of the ceremony, interment was less than half complete.
● In inviting President Lincoln to the ceremonies, David Wills, of the committee for the November 19
Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, wrote, "It is the desire that, after the Oration, you, as
Chief Executive of the nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate
remarks.”
● Glen LaFantasie: “four scores and seven years: connected with Psalms 90:10
● Wills observed Lincoln's usage of the imagery of birth, life, and death in reference to a nation "brought
forth", "conceived", and that shall not "perish".
● Of the people, by the people, for the people:
● Lincoln tied the current struggle to the days of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, speaking of
the principles that the nation was conceived in: liberty and the proposition that all men are created equal.
Moreover, he tied both to the abolition of slavery—a new birth of freedom—and the maintenance of
representative government.
● Another point Lincoln tries to make in his address is that you can’t forget the events that are unfolding
throughout the war. He says “ That we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the
nation shall have a new birth of freedom and that the government by the people by the people for the
people, shall not perish from earth.” Lincoln is trying to tell the people of the union and the rest of the
divided country that we have to protect the principles that the men on the battlefield are fighting for, and we
can’t let them die in vain. He also sends a beacon of hope to many people throughout saying that we are
still a country for the people and it will not change.
● The Declaration of Independence opens with the words: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal’. Lincoln refers to these words in the opening sentence of his declaration.
○ However, when he uses the words, he is including all Americans – male and female (he uses
‘men’ here, but ‘man’, as the old quip has it, embraces ‘woman’) – including African slaves,
 whose liberty is at issue in the war. The Union side wanted to abolish slavery and free the slaves,
whereas the Confederates, largely in the south of the US, wanted to retain slavery.
● Lincoln begins the third and final paragraph of the Gettysburg Address with a slight rhetorical flourish: the
so-called rule of three, which entails listing three things in succession. Here, he uses three verbs which are
roughly synonymous with each other – ‘dedicate’, ‘consecrate’, ‘hallow’ – in order to drive home the
sacrifice the dead soldiers have made. It is not for Lincoln and the survivors to declare this ground
hallowed: the soldiers who bled for their cause have done that through the highest sacrifice it is possible to
make.
I have a Dream - Martin Luther King Jr.

● The signing of Emancipation Proclamation (1863) - beacon of light for the Negros
○ But the Negro is still not free - crippled by segregation and discrimination - “lonely island of
poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity - exile in his own land
● This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the
"unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has
defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this
sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked
"insufficient funds."
● Justice as a deposit in the bank vault - intends to withdraw the check as cash
● The urgency of the present - time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit
path of racial justice
○ Negro’s discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating movement to freedom and equality
○ 1963 as a beginning - neither rest or tranquility in America until the Negro is granted citizenship
rights
○ One must not be guilty of wrongful deeds in the process - conduct the struggle on the plane of
dignity and discipline - no physical violence
● The militancy included Whites - the realisation that their destiny is tied up with the Black destiny
○ We cannot walk alone
○ We cannot turn back
○ There is no satisfaction as long as
■ the Negro remains to be the victm of the unspeakable horrors of the police brutality
■ Access to motels and restrooms
■ Children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity - “for whites only”
■ justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
● Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to
Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and
ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
● The Dream
○ Rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed
○ Brotherhood among the sons of slaves and masters in Georgia
○ Mississippi turning into an oasis of freedom and justice
○ Judgement not by colour but character
○ down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the
words of "interposition" and "nullification" ‐‐ one day right there in Alabama little black boys
and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and
brothers.
○ Hew out the mountain of despair and hope
● And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow‐capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
● Aside from its enormous place in American and world history, it is an oratorical masterpiece, and aside
from its social impact and its spiritual lineage of principled leadership for nonviolent resistance (Christ,
Thoreau, Gandhi, King, Mandela), it is – from a leadership communications point of view – one of the most
remarkable speeches in American history – or in the English language, for that matter.
● The rich lode of metaphors in the first few paragraphs – “seared in the flames of withering injustice,”
“…the manacles of segregation and the chains of injustice,” “…a lonely island of poverty amidst a vast
ocean of material prosperity” –
Self-Reliance - Ralph Waldo Emerson

● To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all
men-that is genius.
○ A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from
within.
○ Man often dismisses his own thought because it is his - not of a bard or a sage
● Mna’s education: the conviction that envy is ignorance - he must take himself for better for worse as his
portion
○ The power- is new- but he has no idea of what he can do unless he tries -
○ One face/ character/ fact makes an impression on him, the other none
○ This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony - we half express ourselves:
ashamed of the divine idea which each of us represents
○ A man is relieved and gay when he has put in his heart for his work but not what is said or done
otherwise
● Trust thyself:
○ Accept the place that the divine providence has found for you
○ Accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny
● The rebel mind: their mind being whole, their eye is as yet conquered
○ Infancy conforms to nobody, all conform to it
○ Boys : never cumbers about consequences or interests - gives independent or genuine verdict
● There are voices that we hear in solitude: society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of
everyone of its members
○ Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread
to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.
○ The virtue in most request is conformity.
● Self reliance thus becomes an aversion
● Emerson argues that people must embrace nonconformity to recover their self-reliance, even if doing so
requires the individual to reject what most people believe is goodness.
○ that there is a better kind of virtue than the opinions of respected people or demands for charity for
the needy. This goodness comes from the individual’s own intuition, and not what is visible to
society.
● Living according to the world’s notion of goodness seems easy, and living according to one’s own notions
of goodness is easy in solitude, but it takes a truly brave person to live out one’s own notions of goodness in
the face of pressure from society. Although it might seem easier to just go along with the demands of
society, it is harder because it scatters one’s force.
○ Aware that being a nonconformist is easier argued than lived, Emerson warns that the individual
should be prepared for disapproval from people high and low once he or she finally refuses to
conform to society’s dictates. It will be easy to brush off the polite disapproval of cultivated
people, but the loud and rough disapproval of common people, the mob, will require all of the
individual’s inner resources to face down.
● The other thing Emerson sees as a roadblock to the would-be nonconformist is the world’s obsession with
consistency. Really though, he argues, why should you be bound at all by your past actions or fear
contradicting yourself? Emerson notes that society has made inconsistency into a devil, and the result is
small-mindedness. He uses historical and religious examples to point out that every great person we have
ever known refused to be bound by the past. If you want to be great, he says, embrace being misunderstood
just like them. Emerson argues that the individual should have faith that inconsistency is an appearance
only, since every action always reflects an underlying harmony that is rooted in one’s own individuality. So
long as the individual is true to themselves, their actions will be authentic and good.
● Given his arguments in the first part of the essay, Emerson hopes by now that everyone realizes how
ridiculous conformity is and the negative impact it is having on American culture. He describes American
culture of the day as one of mediocrity that can only be overcome with the recognition that in each
individual is a little bit of the universe, of God, and that wherever the individual lives authentically, God is
to be found. Emerson believes people tap into that truth, into justice, and into wisdom by sitting still and
letting the underlying reality that grounds us and all creation speak through us in the form of intuition.
 Everything else—time, space, even the past—appears as something apart from the underlying reality only
because of our habits of thinking. Emerson counsels that people can escape that way of thinking by living
in the present like plants do, and, like everything in nature, expressing one’s self against all comers.
● Emerson laments that his society has lost all sense of what it means to be self-reliant individuals. He
describes his historical moment as a weak one that has birthed no great people, and city boys seeking
professions quit as soon as they are confronted with an initial failure. Emerson admires the country boy
who tries thing after thing, not at all concerned about any failure or conforming to society; these are the
kinds of people Emerson believes will make America’s history. If the individual wants to achieve true
virtue, Emerson argues, they must go to war against anything that oppresses their sense of individuality,
even if people accuse them of gross immorality as a result. Taking care to meet their idea of their duties to
loved ones or even to themselves will vindicate them and maybe even bring people around to their way of
seeing. Ultimately, Emerson believes that living in this state of war against society is actually true virtue.
● Emerson closes his essay by applying the abstract concept of self-reliance to specifics. He believes that
self-reliance can revolutionize every part of society if we let it: We should quit praying for something
outside of ourselves to save us and instead act. We should quit subordinating our experiences to religions
and philosophies and instead listen to our intuition. Emerson argues that Americans especially should stop
traveling abroad to become cultured and instead create their own arts, literature, and culture using the
materials we find right here at home. Emerson believes that progress is beside the point: we should quit
pushing for it because it only saps our strength; society does not progress in a straight line. Emerson argues
that people should stop locating their identities in property and instead understand that the most valuable
part of a man is inside of him. Self-reliance can even be applied to politics: Emerson argues that we should
quit governing ourselves by political parties and instead have each man govern himself by intuition.
Emerson concludes by noting that self-reliance is the true path to peace.
● Transcendentalism: imported from Europe - continental philosophy - non Anglophone philosophy - born
out of the encounter with German philosophy
○ Dialogue takes place through english writers
○ German idealism - opposite of materialism - transcending matter to incorporeal - transcending
sensory experience - mind over matter
○ Affirms the thinking mind and the supremacy of the individual
○ Demand for democracy (liberty/free will/individualism)
● Self-reliance is arguing for an authentic existence
○ A self that is not differential to history / tradition
■ Emancipation disempowering history
○ Be one with yourself - liberate yourselves from the shackles of the past
● Self-reliance doesn’t equate with selfishness/egotism/self-interest
○ Every man should be a non-conformist - going against gross trappings of society/institutions
○ Discover intimacy with oneself - discover affinity with self/spirit that persuades all humanity and
nature
■ Over-arching spirit - over-soul - universal being
■ By turning inwards, you discover the entire universe /cosmos/divine principle
■ Divine being appears in nature - emblem of the over-soul
■ Individual who meditates on nature can tell the workings of the universal spirit
● Nature can enlighten and discipline the soul
○ By establishing kinship, we established congruence with nature
○ Nature and life are our dictionaries
● We must also embrace the common/everyday/low
○ Repositories of knowledge are everywhere
■ “Every American can see the scholar”- knowledge is accessible to everyone
■ Each man is built with the capacity to think + touch with the divine soul
● Life is process:
○ Constantly in movement and flux - consistency is a foolish demand- must be avoided at all costs -
embrace the change - demystifying consistency
○ POETRY has to be original/organic rather than imitative: imitation is suicide
■ “Do i contradict myself? I am large. I contain multitudes” - Whitman
■ Liberate itself from retrospect - build original relation with universe - cultivate originality
- destroy the relations built by forefathers
○ Valorising newness/innocence
○ Poetry must be as free as its creator
■ Self is primordially independent - can recreate the world by viewing it
■ Poet is an incarnation of God
■ Poet is doing in words what everyone can do in deeds - recreating
■ Poet is word: testifies for supremacy of the individual
■ Privileging of the individual does not impinge upon others - create community of
autonomous and dignified individuals
■ Self-reliance feeding into creation of commodities
Declaration of Independence
Act of Second Continental Congress
July 4, 1776

● The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the Second Continental
Congress, states the reasons the British colonies of North America sought independence in July of 1776.
○ The declaration opens with a preamble describing the document's necessity in explaining why the
colonies have overthrown their ruler and chosen to take their place as a separate nation in the
world.
○ All men are created equal and there are certain unalienable rights that governments should never
violate.
■ These rights include the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When a
government fails to protect those rights, it is not only the right, but also the duty of the
people to overthrow that government.
■ In its place, the people should establish a government that is designed to protect those
rights. Governments are rarely overthrown, and should not be overthrown for trivial
reasons. In this case, a long history of abuses has led the colonists to overthrow a
tyrannical government.
● The King of Great Britain, George III, is guilty of 27 specific abuses.
○ The King interfered with the colonists' right to self-government and for a fair judicial system.
○ Acting with Parliament, the King also instituted legislation that affected the colonies without their
consent. This legislation levied taxes on the colonists.
○ It also required them to quarter British soldiers, removed their right to trial by jury, and prevented
them from trading freely.
○ Additionally, the King and Parliament are guilty of outright destruction of American life and
property by their refusal to protect the colonies' borders, their confiscation of American ships at
sea, and their intent to hire foreign mercenaries to fight against the colonists.
● The colonial governments tried to reach a peaceful reconciliation of these differences with Great Britain,
but were continually ignored. Colonists who appealed to British citizens were similarly ignored, despite
their shared common heritage and their just cause. After many peaceful attempts, the colonists have no
choice but to declare independence from Great Britain.
○ The new nation will be called the United States of America and will have no further connections
with Great Britain.
○ The new government will reserve the right to levy war, make peace, make alliances with foreign
nations, conduct trade, and do anything else that nations do.
● It has become necessary for the 13 colonies to separate from Great Britain. These 13 colonies have the right
to become a nation as legitimate as any other nation. Additionally, it is important to explain to the public,
including those in other nations, why this declaration of independence is being made.
● This declaration is based on certain truths. All men are meant to be equal and to have certain rights
(“unalienable rights”) that the government should never take away. These rights include “life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness.”
● Governments exist to support the rights of men. Governments exist only through the power of the people
that they represent. When a government fails to grant rights to the people and removes the involvement of
the people, the people have the right to change their government in a way that will allow for their
unalienable rights to be protected. Governments should not be overthrown for trivial reasons; it is not
typical for people to change a system that they are accustomed to. However, when the people have suffered
many abuses under the control of a totalitarian leader, they not only have the right but the duty to overthrow
that government
● The introduction relies heavily on the philosophical and political ideas of the Enlightenment period of 18th
century Europe, including the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and, most particularly,
John Locke.
○ Locke believed that humans, by nature, had the right to protection of life, health, liberty and
possessions.
○ Jefferson altered this slightly when he claims the unalienable rights include "life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness."
○ Locke also strongly opposed the divine right of kings--which held that kings held absolute power
because they were placed on their throne by God--and insisted that the people had the right to
consent to their government and that the power of law making resides with the people.
○ Jefferson included this theory when he writes "to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Jefferson's declaration
helped to put Locke's philosophies into the realm of real-world politics. Many revolutions that
occurred after the American Revolution cited Jefferson's Declaration of Independence as
justification in overthrowing a corrupt and dictatorial power.
When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision - Adrienne Rich

● The present time when women are becoming aware and men are also undergoing the process of
understanding is both an invigorating as well as scary.
○ The time of awakening consciousness- confusing and disorienting- affecting the lives of both
women and men equally, even women who are unaware of it and men who deny its claim upon
them.
● What leads to the discrimination
○ the oppressive economic system
○ all other discriminations stem from the intrinsic sexual discrimination.
○ In recent times the connection between sexual biases and political ideology is being established,
this connection creates an understanding of the problem at a much nuanced and deeper level.
● Stirring up of self calls for looking at things in a fresher, newer perspective, for reading texts with a new
critical lens and for re-visioning the already seen.
○ essential for women’s survival, for it helps them understand the prejudices they have been
immersed in for ages and helps them in turn to know their true selves.
○ This awakening is a journey of self identification for the women, and also for them to avoid the
destruction of self that the patriarchal society enables.
● A feminist reading of literature would create an insight into women’s lives, their reality, how they imagine
their reality, how they are asked to imagine it, and lastly how language which is essentially patriarchal is
their entrapment but can also be at the same time the point of liberation.
● Tradition of the past has to be well known because only when one knows their past will they stop holding
on to it and will be able to do away with it. Understanding the concept of sexual identity created by orders
of the past traditions is essential because it should be prevented from asserting itself in the new order.
○ A completely new exploration has to be undertaken by women writers, but these images of women
liberation are both difficult to create and comprehend since these are not grounded in the past and
there is little or no support of the past for their novel formulation. Nothing in history supports the
new narrative so for them to create a ‘new psychic geography’ is difficult as well as dangerous.
● Jane Harrison considers convention and propriety as reasons for men not finding space as a sex in women’s
writing, are not too precise for Rich. According to her, up until very recently women were not aware of the
power exercised by men over them and so were not in tune with their anger. The women writers as a result
wrote about love as their source of suffering, and this suffering as inevitable to their female life. She
mentions poets like Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop who never talked of sexual relationships in their
poetry and maintained their safe distance from the topic.
● Another aspect of exploration that Jane Harrison’s question would require is an understanding of the roles
men and women play in their artist partner’s life.
○ Women have been a ‘luxury’ for male artists, playing the role of artist’s muse but also his
‘comforter, nurse, cook, bearer of his seed, secretarial assistant and copyist of manuscripts’.
○ The women artist attempting to create art is an unfortunate scene for the men, her work is called
inconsequential and this discouragement is the reason why women writers struggle to create works
in tune with her true actual self, she fears the language and the form and it creates an
overpowering dominance over her that she isn’t able to survive through her internal strength
primarily because the discouragement is so sharp.
● In Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Rich recognizes her painstaking effort to maintain a calm,
detached tone something she observes she herself does and a lot of other women authors do as well.
○ They are in tune with their anger but take all possible effort to avoid seeming angry. Virginia
Woolf, while she is addressing the audience of women, is also acutely aware of the men who
would be certainly hearing her, Morgan, Lytton and Maynard Keynes and also her father, Leslie
Stephen and so it a conscious effort to maintain the calm composure even when attacks are made
on her integrity.
○ She uses the language to create the identity for self but also uses it to protect herself from the male
gaze and opinion.
● Rich further discusses that it is easier to talk about women writers because they have a special place in the
male psyche.
 ○ It is much more dangerous to talk about women who could not be writers because they have to
wash dishes and take care of their children, even more difficult to talk of women who have to take
care of other people’s laundry, dishes and children and those that sell their bodies to feed their
children.
○ Women writers are special, romanticized by men until they remain in the periphery and do not
threaten the central position of power men occupy. These special women then are ‘token women’,
those that have been lucky, not just skilled because a lot of skilled women have been denied the
space to grow.
● A women writer is met with a lot of confusion when she sits down to write, she is met time and again with
images, narratives and language that men have created, these negate her own identity, all that she stands for.
○ In retrospect, she observes that in her early poems the confusion is clearly evident; she was writing
keeping her literary masters and their themes at hand.
● Adrienne Rich published her writings early; because if she had titles to her name it meant that others would
agree that she was a poet.
○ So she soon dived into traditional marriage life which seemed to her like the obvious next step,
bearing three children by the time she was thirty.
○ She was attempting to chose a life that was available to the men, one in which ‘sexuality, work and
parenthood’ could coexist, with little realization as to how different her situation is in comparison
to the men. She soon started feeling a looming sense of dissatisfaction, something that she didn’t
understand at that time, and there were no shared narratives of women that could help her.
● She wasn’t happy with what she was writing and even though she was still publishing books and fulfilling
all the domestic roles of a woman, she knew something was lacking and she started looking at herself as a
failed poetess and a failed woman. She was losing touch with who she was and what she wanted to say. In a
poem called ‘Halfway’ she had written about herself, “A young girl, thought sleeping, is certified dead”,
she just needed to find herself some thoughts. During this period in her life, Rich confesses that she hardly
wrote anything and whatever she did it frustrated her further, because she couldn’t hear herself through the
words.
● It is based on the experiences of this period in her life, that she makes pertinent observations about women
writing poetry.
○ for creating art, one needs to immerseoneselfin an alternate space of imaginative experience, far
from reality.
○ to create alternatives one has to imagine and re-imagine, and allow imagination to be let free from
the shackles of everyday reality.
● time to think about self, about their politics:
○ It is only much later in life through these understandings that she could write poetry that was
about the women experience and not universal as she was indoctrinated to do. She realized that
political is not that which is outside, but is very much internal and she has to get in tune with it to
create texts about true woman experience. .
● She ends the essay by recounting a dream where she is supposed to be reciting her poetry before a women’s
meeting, and she starts singing a jazz song- which she thinks is extremely appropriate to inspire women
writers for theirs too is a song of pain, of agony, of victimization and of anger. This anger should be not be
suppressed because it is the result of extremely real and tangible subordination that women have been
subjected to for years. And as women consciousness rises and she starts creating unheard narratives about
herself giving true expression to her subjectivity, men will also have to find their own subjectivity.
The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro - Frederick Douglass

● Appearnce causes to misrepresent the speaker

● The distance between the platform and the slave plantation from which he escaped is considerable - the
difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight.
● The repeated mention of “your nation” - does America not mean anything to you? Why is there a resistance
to call “my nation”?
● Frederick Douglass was a fiery orator and his speeches were often published in various abolitionist
newspapers. Among his well-known speeches is "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," presented in
Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, a version of which he published as a booklet. It is often studied in
literature classes today. Douglass moved to Rochester in 1847, when he became the publisher of The North
Star, an abolitionist weekly. There were approximately 500 attendees who heard him speak, each paying
twelve and a half cents.
● He had been invited to speak about what the Fourth of July means for America's black population, and
while the first part of his speech praises what the founding fathers did for this country, his speech soon
develops into a condemnation of the attitude of American society toward slavery.
● Douglass begins his speech by addressing "Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens." Here, he is likely
addressing the president of the Anti-Slavery Society — not the president of the United States. It is
noteworthy that Douglass considers himself a citizen, an equal to the spectators in attendance. Throughout
this speech, as well as his life, Douglass advocated equal justice and rights, as well as citizenship, for
blacks. He begins his speech by modestly apologizing for being nervous in front of the crowd and
recognizes that he has come a long way since his escape from slavery. He tells the audience that they have
gathered to celebrate the Fourth of July, but he reminds them that the nation is young, and, like a young
child, it is still impressionable and capable of positive change.
● He touches on the history of the American Revolutionaries' fight for freedom against their legal bondage
under British rule. He tells the audience that he supports the actions of these revolutionaries. Douglass
thereby sets up an argument for the freeing of slaves. He reminds the audience that, in 1776, many people
thought it was subversive and dangerous to revolt against British tyranny. In 1852, however, with hindsight,
to say "that America was right, and England wrong is exceedingly easy." Similarly, he reasons, in 1852,
people consider abolitionism a dangerous and subversive political stance. Douglass thus implies that future
generations will probably consider his anti-slavery stance patriotic, just, and reasonable.
● Douglass praises and respects the signers of the Declaration of Independence, people who put the interests
of a country above their own. He concedes, however, that the main purpose of his speech is not to give
praise and thanks to these men, for he says that the deeds of those patriots are well known. Instead, he urges
his listeners to continue the work of those great revolutionaries who brought freedom and democracy to this
land.
● Douglass then asks a rhetorical question: "Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural
justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us [blacks]?" He pushes forward his
thesis: "This Fourth July [sic] is yours, not mine" [italics his]. Indeed, he says, to ask a black person to
celebrate the white man's freedom from oppression and tyranny is "inhuman mockery and sacrilegious
irony." By "sacrilegious," he means the evil defilement of sacred American ideals — democracy, freedom,
and equal rights.
● The real subject of his speech, he concedes, is American slavery. He condemns America for being untrue to
its founding principles, its past, and its present. The audience must fulfill what the founders of the country
advocated. To the slave, Douglass tells the audience, "your 4th of July is a sham; your boasted liberty, an
unholy license [for enslaving blacks] . . . your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery."
● Douglass spends the next part of his speech pre-empting some of the arguments that theoretical opponents
might make. As for the mildly sympathetic spectator who complains that the abolitionist fails to make a
favorable impression by constantly denouncing slavery rather than making persuasive arguments, Douglass
retorts by saying that there are no more arguments to be made. He says there is no person on earth who
would be in favor of becoming a slave himself. How can it be, therefore, that some people are in favor of
imposing a condition on others that they would not impose on themselves? As for those who maintain that
slavery is part of a divine plan, Douglass argues that something which is inhuman cannot be considered
divine. He considers such a pro-slavery posture to be blasphemy because it gives cruelty a place in God's
nature.
● Douglass condemns the profits made from the slave trade, and, once again, he compares the treatment of
slaves to that of animals. He mentions that in Baltimore, slave traders transported slaves in chains to ships
in the dead of night because anti-slavery activism had made the public aware of the cruelty of that trade.
Douglass recalls that when he was a child, the cries of chained slaves passing his house on route to the
docks in the middle of the night had a chilling, unsettling effect on him.
● Next, Douglass condemns the American churches and ministers (excluding, of course, abolitionist religious
movements such as Garrison's) for not speaking out against slavery. The contemporary American church,
by remaining silent and acquiescing to the existence of slavery, he argues, is more of an infidel than Paine,
Voltaire, or Bolingbroke (three eighteenth-century philosophers who spoke out against the churches of their
time). Douglass argues that the church is "superlatively guilty" — superlative, meaning even more guilty —
because it is an institution which has the power to eradicate slavery by condemning it. The Fugitive Slave
Law, Douglass reasons, is "tyrannical legislation" because it removes all due process and civil rights for the
black person: "For black men, there is neither law nor justice, humanity nor religion." (Under this Act, even
freed blacks could easily be accused of being fugitive slaves and taken to the South.) The Christian church
which allows this law to remain in effect, Douglass says, is not really a Christian church at all.
● Douglass returns to his theme of American democracy and freedom. He criticizes American ideology as
inconsistent. For him, while it professes freedom, it does not give all people that right. And while it
advocates democracy in Europe and elsewhere, it does not grant it to all of its own people. Similarly, he
argues that while the American Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal,"
American society creates an under-class of men and women.
● To his opponents who believe that the Constitution permits slavery, Douglass offers the writings of
Spooner, Goodell, Sewall, and Smith — four abolitionists whose essays "clearly vindicate the Constitution
from any design to support slavery." Douglass sides with those activists who believe that the founding
fathers meant to eliminate slavery and that the Constitution reflects this.
● Douglass concludes on an optimistic note. He believes that anti-slavery sentiments will eventually triumph
over pro-slavery forces. Nations, particularly Western countries, in the mid-nineteenth century were
generally against slavery. In fact, slavery was banned in the British colonies in 1834 and in the French
colonies in 1848; politicians in those countries could no longer claim to support the rights of man while
allowing slavery. He argues that no longer can the cruelties of American slavery be hidden from the rest of
the world. Trade and commerce have opened up borders, and political ideas know no boundaries. Douglass
closes his essay with a poem by Garrison entitled "The Triumph of Freedom," stressing the inevitable
arrival of freedom and the abolitionist's promise to fight slavery "whate'er the peril or the cost."