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Delivered July 5th, 1852Corinthian HallRochester, New York• Rochester Ladies’ Antislavery Society of Rochester
• 500-600 people, 12 1/2 cents each
• FD letter to Gerrit Smith: 2-3 weeks of preparation (cf. opening: “no elaborate preparation”; “I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together”)
• Prayer; reading of the Declaration; speech; “universal burst of applause”
John W. Blassingame, ed. The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series One. Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. Vol. 2. 1847-54. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982. 359-88.
Circulation
• Request for publication in pamphlet form
• 700 “subscriptions” on the occasion
• Published in Frederick Douglass’ Paper (formerly the North Star), 9 July 1852. Issue 29, col. D: “The Celebration at Corinthian Hall”
The structure of the speech
• Douglass’ headings• [Intro]
• The Internal Slave Trade Internal Slavery
• Religious Liberty
• The Church Responsible
• Religion in England and Religion in America
• The Constitution
• Three parts (Blight): “three essential rhetorical moves”• Setting patriotic Americans at ease
• “Bitter critique”
• Ending with hope
Another way to think about structure:from Cicero, De Oratore (On the Ideal Orator, 1st century B.C.E.)
• exordium – introduction; exhorts (calls to) people to attend to the speaker’s presence and themes
• narratio – the story or historical context for the issue under discussion
• confirmatio – the case being made: what is argued
• refutatio – refuting counter arguments: what do people say against the position and how are they wrong
• peroration – the “outside” of the oration: the conclusion
Ethos, structure, ironyDouglass refers to but inverts or treats ironically almost every structural element of the classical oration.
•irony: incongruity or discordance between what is expected and the state of things
•This inversion of expectations contributes to the central irony of his situation as speaker: “Why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?” (¶30, 155; 367).
•Irony rather than argument: “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument is needed” (¶38, 158; 371).
Exordium (¶ 1-3): • Douglass: I won’t “grace my
speech with any high sounding exordium” (148; 359-60).
• Little learning
• Modesty trope - a convention
• Distance: “between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped”
Narratio: the story, historical context (¶4-28; 149-54; 362-66)
• A story that does not need to be retold
• How to think about time:
• the celebration of the day
• the childhood of the Republic of America - “Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier”
• Geological time: analogy of the river (¶4)
• A “simple story”;“as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor: a national trait, a national weakness” (¶27)
Narration as argument
• “an unfashionable idea” (¶6): “here lies the merit”
• “Resolved. . . “ (¶13)
• An uncompleted project: “The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history--the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny” (¶14).
• “The Declaration of Independence is the Ring-Bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny . . . Stand by those principles” (¶15)
• “That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost” (¶16). The ship of state imperiled: crisis
Ethos and irony: an oscillation between division and identification“The point from which I am compelled to view them . . .”- division
“I will unite with you to honor their memory” (¶20)
----
“They were peace men . . .”(¶22): antithesis
Laying the corner-stone of the national superstructure through syntax: “Fully appreciating . . .” (¶24)
From monument to crisis (¶29-33)
• “ My business is with the present . . . the ever-living now” “Now is the time, the important time” “ You must live and must die, and you must do your work” (¶29, 154).
• Washington’s monument built “by the price of human blood,” yet Washington “broke the chains” of his slaves.
• “Why am I called upon to speak here to-day?” –a “sad sense of disparity between us” (¶32)
Sharp reminders of distance/division
• “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine” (156);“to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty . . . sere sacrilegious irony” (156)
• Why I am called upon to speak? “By the rivers of Babylon . . .” (156) -- Psalms 137: 1-6: the captive forced to sing
An ironic confirmatio: an argument which does not need to be argued• “My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this
day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view.” (156; 368)
• “America is false to the past . . . present . . . and future” (¶32; 156).
• “But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say . . . argue more, denounce less; persuade more, rebuke less . . .” (157)
• “Where all is plain there is nothing to be argued.”
What does not need to be argued:
• 1. The slave is a man: legal evidence (¶335)
“We” are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools . . .
Douglass’s identification (1st person plural) with “the negro race”; the rhetoric of the list (157; 370)
• 2. The slave owns his/her body -- “natural right to freedom” does not need the devices of argument (158): “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him” (158).
Confirmatio continued
• 1. Internal slave trade
“Behold” - enargeia: bringing vividly before the eyes; human as animal (horse, sheep, swine)
Douglass’ narrative: Why here? How different from the autobiography? (160; 373)
• 2. Fugitive Slave Law (162); “religious liberty” - the fusion of religious and civic identities
The law as a “declaration of war”: religion as “an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man” (163).
Confirmation continued
• 3. The church as bulwark of slavery: criticism of Northern ministers who teach that “we ought to obey man’s law before the law of God” (165).
• 4. “National inconsistency”: comparing national religious practices
• 5. Constitution as “glorious liberation document” (168)
Constitution
• Garrison’s position: abolitionists should not vote because America’s government was pro-slavery; rejection of a corrupt political process; freedom in the north for blacks did not grant voting rights
• Douglass, 1851: refusing to pursue the vote is acquiescing in discrimination; joined the Liberty and Free Soil parties to get emancipation before major political leaders; the oppressed should participate in the political process
Peroration (¶63-64; 169-71)
• He still has hope for the country: drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence in the context of internationalism
• “walled cities and empires have become unfashionable” (170)
• Ethiopianism -- an Africanist African-American philosophy
• Garrisonian sentiments: bonds across division within abolitionist movement
Declarations in Dialogue
• A text becomes an intertext: circulation, imitation, warrant: the monumental becomes a flow
• Republic of letters: public and private spheres, counterpublics (social movements; advocacy)
• The redefinition of the human: who will count as “man”