Reread paragraph 3 of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” What comparison does Frederick Douglass make in the text between himself and his audience?
What can you infer from this text about the audience that Douglass is addressing? Cite several details from the paragraph to support your inference.
Answers
. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.
2. The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.
3. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here today is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you.
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Answer:
In the first paragraph not only does Douglass describe his “powers of speech” as “limited,” but he also maintains that he has “limited experience” in exercising them, which he claims to have done chiefly in “country school houses.” Yet in the next paragraph he says that he has spoken in Corinthian Hall many times to many of the same people sitting before him now. The last sentence of the second paragraph (“But neither…”) suggests what he is doing. He is walking a tightrope. He seeks at once to ingratiate himself with a display of humility while at the same time establishing his authority as a speaker and justifying his presence on the platform. He continues this balancing act in the next paragraph when he asserts that he has “little…learning.” Yet he deploys the term “exordium,” which contradicts the little-learning claim by revealing a study-acquired vocabulary and a knowledge of formal rhetoric.
. What expectations do you think a white audience would have for a black speaker in 1852? How does Douglass address these expectations in his introduction?
In this introduction Douglass is doing more than simply presenting himself to his audience. When he raises the topic of slavery in the third paragraph, he brings into his text a topic which the color of his skin has already brought into Corinthian Hall, racism. Even among some abolitionists there existed the strong prejudice that African Americans were inferior, indeed, something less than fully human. Douglass’s entire speech is designed to do dispel that belief. In his introduction he begins to do so with that subtle flash of learning revealed in his use of “exordium.” Thus with an ironic wink he signals to his listeners that they are in for a serious display of learning and rhetorical skill, a feat quite beyond the capacities of an inferior being.
Since he established an identification between the founders and the abolitionists in paragraphs 4 and 6, the temperate qualities he ascribes here to the former apply to the latter as well, and this ascription is important because it addresses the charge that abolitionists were fanatics and monomaniacs.