Frederick Douglass' Fourth of July Speech: A Masterpiece of Narration

“The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.”

So said escaped slave Frederick Douglass in his famous speech, “What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?” In this speech, which condemned the very concept of the 4th of July, Douglass told a story in vivid language that shocked the conscience of those that heard him speak. He told a sordid story of callous torture. This speech was a lesson in the power of storytelling. Douglass told a horror story, not a children’s tale, but it was a horror story, a story of unblinking truth, that America needed to hear.

That is why Douglass told a story to his shocked audience in Rochester New York on July 5, 1852. His story teemed with pity, horror, and grief. That his story was true, that it arose from his own experience, added to its heartrending power. It was Douglass’ story, not his historical reasoning (which was impressive in itself), his emotional narrative, that gave his long speech its mesmerizing power.

By 1852, chattel slavery was deeply ensconced in the United States’ economy. How could Douglass overcome this pernicious tradition? Surely not with facts or figures. Facts, figures, and statistics rarely persuade people. No, when speakers promote controversial arguments, they need to tell a story.

Earlier Post: One Searing Phrase, Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” Speech

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Douglass’ story narrated the slavedriver’s moral depravity. He led his audience through a slave procession’s suffering and examined the slave market’s dehumanizing economics. As the story continued, Douglass gave a generalized critique of the United States’ slave-driven economy.

After a lengthy introduction, Douglass contrasted the joys of the 4th of July against the horrors that the enslaved experienced daily. Quoting the Bible’s bitterly mournful Psalm 137, Douglass called up the “mournful wail of millions:”

“Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. 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!’”

Warming to his narrative, Douglass told the horrifying story of the slave merchants, who drove men, women, and children like animals, heedless of their suffering while indifferent to the viciousness of his own behavior:

“Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States.”

Showing his gift for narration, Douglass conveyed the vivid details of the slave merchants who, across the southern United States, treated their human merchandise with more cruelty than they showed toward their dogs:

“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. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them.”

Continuing his story, Douglass turned to the suffering of the victims, the enslaved human beings who, suffering desperately, hoping futilely for some relief from the physical and, worse, mental torment that marked the slave-procession. As the slavedriver pushed the forced laborers forward, he behaved, in Douglass’ enraged commentary, like a madman, accountable to no one. It was Douglass, but not the slavedriver, who recognized the victims’ searing, unbearable suffering. Douglass focused first on the slavedriver:

“Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives!”

Douglas then turned to the tormented slaves:

“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!”

Unconcerned whether the enslaved are exhausted, suffering, or in pain, the slavedriver in Douglass’ depiction made his living with brutality and fear, not humanity:

“The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the centre of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on.”

Still, by Douglas’ account, the procession’s brutality was merely a precursor to the market itself. When they arrived at the auction, customers examined the offerings as if they were buying horses or cattle, again, utterly heedless of their victims’ most elemental humanity:

“Follow this drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude.”

To persuade his audience, however, Douglass generalized the sad, horrifying tale. It was not enough, could not be enough, for Douglass’ ever-so-dignified listeners to accept that his Gothic story might have been real, that these events could have once happened. For it was not just one story. Douglass showed audience that his story represented everyday events in the southern United States. From one end of Dixie to the other, from slave states as far north as Delaware and Maryland, and south to Texas and Florida, the white economy’s prosperity and dignity sprung from the slavers’ brutality. One vicious procession, after another, after another. Slave markets and auctions without end. A massive enterprise, Douglass explained, in which the entire southern culture was an opus of ruthless behavior that betrayed the nation’s pretense to be free:

“Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.”

Not just any part of the United States, but, Douglass insisted, “the ruling part of the United States.” Douglas was right. Even the northern states relied on the raw materials that the slave states sent them. Or, as Douglass correctly noted, it was, ever so ironically, slavery – cruelty – forced labor – that propelled the greatest free nation on earth. The South’s enslaved labor cultivated cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco. Northern mills processed the farm products and sold them on the domestic and international markets. A wheel of prosperity for many, but not everyone, as the nation steadfastly refused to look at the horrible story that made the United States rich and powerful.

Earlier Post about This Speech: Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Fourth of July Speech and the Christian Right

Earlier Post: Joe Biden's Juneteenth Speech Used Values to Support Policies

 
There’s an old saying that, if you want to understand something, follow the money. Slavery brought immense income to many. That was not Douglass’ point. Douglass’ story took the nation’s eyes off the money and onto the heartlessness that slavers showed to their victims. Douglass, who bore the scars of the slave-driver’s whip on his back, told a story that was hard to deny. Widely republished in newspapers, flyers, and books, Douglass’ oration helped the United States awaken its slowly growing conscience.

Stories work. If you want to persuade people, tell a story. 

by William D. Harpine

Copyright © 2024 by William D. Harpine

Image: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons