Frederick Douglass Speech Rhetorical Devices

Analysis Essay of Frederick Douglass’s Speech Frederick Douglass was a famous African American leader in the 19th century. He was born as a slave, but he managed to escape to the north. After that, he became an activist in helping black slaves escape to the north and devoted himself into the abolition of slavery in the United States. In 1852, he made a famous speech in Rochester on 4th of July, which was the Independence Day in the U.S. In his speech, Douglass’s main audience is the white citizens of Rochester. He uses rhetorical questions, parallelism, and metaphor to criticize the hypocritical situation that slavery still existed in the United States and to call upon more people to support the abolitionism. First, through the use of rhetorical
The second question explains the reasons why the Independence Day is not a holiday for African Americans. As long as slavery exists, the idea of liberty and equality, the core of the Declaration of Independence, is not fulfilled in the United States because slavery represents suppression and inequality. The existence of slavery violates the principles presented in the Declaration of Independence which is the base of the Independence Day while people in the United States still celebrated the Independence Day. This situation is extremely hypocritical. Again, Douglass draws the distinction between white Americans who are free and equal and black Americans who are still the subordinates to some of white Americans in the country. The third question, following Douglass’s position in the first question and his reasoning in the second question, is the conclusion that the Independence Day is not worth celebrating by African Americans and that it is even rejected by African Americans while some white Americans even expected African Americans to bring their “humble offering”, to confess the “benefits” and to express their “devout gratitude” for the Independence Day. Douglass considers these expectations to be hypocritical and humiliating for African Americans. Gradually building up his logic through these 3 questions, Douglass successfully proves that Independence Day is only a partial national holiday because it’s only for white Americans