James A. Colaiaco. _Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July_. New
York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 247 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $16.95
(paper), ISBN 1-4039-8072-1.
Reviewed for H-SHEAR by Richard S. Newman, Department of History,
Rochester
Institute of Technology
What to Historians is Douglass's Fourth of July?
In a century of great oratory, Frederick Douglass stood out. Tall and
commanding with nothing less than perfect pitch (to tell from those who
heard him speak), Douglass gave some of the most memorable speeches of
the
Civil War era. His first major address to the New England Antislavery
Society, given only a few years after he escaped bondage, even had
veterans
of the movement hating slavery anew. Following the Civil War, Douglass
captured Abraham Lincoln's place in American reform history as perhaps
few
other contemporaries could. And then there is his most famous speech:
"What
to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"[1] Everyone, from academicspecialists
to grade school kids, now reads Douglass's brilliant address, which his
biographer William S. McFeely has labeled "perhaps the greatest
antislavery
speech ever."[2] Originally delivered in Rochester's majestic
Corinthian
Hall on July 5, 1852--and presented by the Rochester Sewing Antislavery
Society--the Fourth of July speech scales the heights of American
oratory in
a way that only masters of the form--Edward Everett, Daniel Webster,
Abraham
Lincoln, and Sojourner Truth--could reach. It is a masterpiece.
Strangely, Douglass's Fourth of July speech has not been the subject of
a
full-length, modern study--something akin to the "speeches that changed
America" genre that has become fashionable since the publication of Gary
Wills's _Lincoln at Gettysburg_ (1992). We have books on nearly all of
Lincoln's major addresses, not to mention studies of black orators, like
David Walker and Martin Luther King Jr. We have examinations of Native
American speakers, abolitionist rhetoricians, and progressive writers.
But
Douglass's Fourth of July speech has waited patiently for its great
critic.
James A. Colaiaco, a master teacher of great books at New York
University,
in his _Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July_, offers the fullest
and,
in many ways, most compelling examination of the black orator's speech.
Colaiaco, who has studied the rhetoric of Socrates and King, heapspraise on
Douglass as a speaker par excellence. Though "best known for his three
inspiring autobiographies," he asserts, Douglass's "greatest legacy to
America is his oratory, forged in the crucible of the battle against
slavery" (p. 2). For Colaiaco, Douglass was both a master rhetorician
and
an intuitive speaker--someone who knew exactly how to pull along an
audience
by conjuring memorable images, marshaling grand ideas, and bending
phrases
just so.
Colaiaco's book contains seven tightly woven chapters, each examining a
specific part of, or theme in, Douglass's speech. After setting the
immediate context that gave rise to Douglass's famous words--"some 500
to
600 people filed into Corinthian Hall" to hear him hold forth for nearly
two
hours--and covering his rise in abolitionists circles, Colaiaco spends
three
chapters on Douglass's speech itself (p. 7). As anyone who has read the
entire address knows, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" is far
from
a short epistle about racial equality. It is a complex and often
serpentine
oration (and then printed text) that requires multiple hearings or
readings
to master. It is a measure of how far we have come from Douglass's
world
that most reproductions of the speech begin roughly one-third or halfwaythrough (though Douglass excerpted the speech himself!). Colaiaco's
study
is all the more welcome because he takes the time to examine each main
section of the essay, fleshing out its political, historical, and
rhetorical
meanings. For those who want to look like heroes in front of a class of
undergraduates trying to grapple with the intricacies of Douglass's
address,
there is no better book.
"Narrating America's Revolutionary Past," the first of his chapters
focusing
on the oration's main themes, treats Douglass's invocation and opening
paragraphs. Douglass praised the founders for undertaking a revolution
based on freedom. Who would not honor the glorious Fourth, he basically
stated? But, Colaiaco points out that Douglass "introduce[d] dissonant
notes early, foreshadowing the blistering attack to come" (p. 33).
Pronouns
indicate Douglass's true mindset: the Fourth of July was actually a
segregated day--"your holiday," as he informed his largely white
audience,
"not mine." This rhetorical technique carried into Douglass's use of
"reversals" later in the speech, where he turned on his audience and
noted
the vast difference between white and black perceptions of this festive
day,
between America's grand rhetoric and its base reality of racial
injustice.
Yet, Douglass reversed himself again, offering hope--a plea,
really--that
America might change. "Like the great Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, to whom
he
is often compared," Colaiaco writes, "Douglass would vehemently condemn
the
nation for its injustice and hypocrisy while at the same time stressing
the
possibility of redemption" (p. 34).
From the outset, Colaiaco claims, Douglass was interested in creating a
usable history for fellow abolitionists. He "invoked the rhetoric of
the
American Revolution for the antislavery movement," noting the"dangerousness" of being a patriot in the 1770s and an abolitionist in
the
1850s (p. 38). Douglass also skillfully appropriated the Declaration of
Independence as an "abolitionist manifesto" (p. 40). Here, Colaiaco
goes
deeper into Douglass's appreciation of natural law--the belief in a
higher
moral order that guides the construction and interpretation of common
law,
constitutions, and broader political discourses--than most scholars,arguing
that Douglass, like John Quincy Adams before him and Lincoln after him,
believed that the Declaration of Independence undergirded the entire
experiment in Republican liberty. For Colaiaco, Douglass used the
insights
of natural law to turn Corinthian Hall into a courtroom where America
would
be put on trial for betraying its bold moral foundation. In other
words,
Douglass praised America to then bury and resurrect it.
"Denouncing America's Present" takes the reader into the heart of
Douglass's
speech. After prattling on about the virtues of the founders, Douglass
whirled around to confront his listeners. "Fellow citizens, pardon me,
allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I,
or
those I represent, to do with your national independence?" With these
"hammer-like rhetorical questions," in Colaiaco's nice phrasing,
Douglass
shifted his critique into high gear and put his white audience on the
defensive. From this moment onward, Colaiaco comments, "scathing
criticism
dominate[d] ... his oration" (p. 52). Seeking not to conciliate either
slaveholders or Northern reformers (who might have felt ennobled by
asking
the black abolitionist to speak), Douglass expressed incredulity that he
must argue for black humanity and equality. According to Colaiaco,
Douglass
relied on a rhetorical technique known as "_prosopopoeia_," or "speaking
in
the voice of someone not present" (in this case, enslaved people), to
express his frustration with the slaveholding United States (p. 57).
His
accusatory language emphasized over and over white hypocrisy for
tolerating
bondage. And Douglass did not let up. "O! Had I the ability, and
could I
reach the nation's year," he stated in a famous rhetorical flourish, "I
would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting
reproach,
withering sarcasm and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed,
but
fire, it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need a storm, the
whirlwind and the earthquake ... the hypocrisy of the nation must be
exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and
announced" (p. 57).
The context for Douglass's bombastic language was the deteriorating
racial
climate of the early 1850s, particularly the new fugitive slave law that
threatened to nationalize slavery by making white Northerners
accomplices in
the rendition of runaway slaves. "Despite the indignation it aroused,
the
fugitive slave law was generally enforced," Colaiaco asserts (p. 69).
Worse, leading American institutions--the federal government and the
Christian church--continued to support property rights-in-man. Finally,
the
internal slave trade still funneled thousands of blacks (some of whom
were
kidnapped from free communities in the North) to slave markets in the
Deep
South. Where was Americans' vaunted moral courage and love of freedom,
Douglass wondered? To stir American outrage, Douglass "reviled the
nation
for tolerating the systematic dehumanization of its black people" (p.
57).
In "Converting to the United States Constitution," Colaiaco skillfully
situates Douglass's speech among broader abolitionist debates over the
Constitution's antislavery status. Because the speech revolves largely
around the broader meaning of the Fourth of July (and because it is
often
excerpted), contemporary readers may not know that Douglass used his
famous
address to flesh out his newfound conversion to antislavery
constitutionalism. Formerly a Garrisonian advocate of the notion that
the
Constitution was a slaveholding document, Douglass by 1851 had come
under
the influence of more dynamic and nuanced abolitionist thinkers, such as
Gerrit Smith. Viewing the Constitution as an abolitionist document,
Douglass read it in "moral, aspirational" terms, in Colaiaco's words (p.
85). Indeed, for Douglass, the Constitution's natural law foundation
was
best reflected in the preamble's dedication to "a more perfect union."
Douglass's conversion to antislavery constitutionalism (as well as his
embrace of party politics) further distanced him from Garrisonians.
But, he
did not look back. Douglass believed that Americans did not even need a
constitutional amendment to ban bondage. In fact, because the founders
did
not mention slavery, Douglass later surmised that they had hoped for
slavery's death. In Rochester, Colaiaco emphasizes, "Douglass contended
[that] the original, unamended Constitution guaranteed liberty and
equality
for all" (p. 102).
Douglass finished his speech exhausted but surprisingly upbeat. He
quickly
published the oration in _Frederick Douglass's Paper_, then printed the
address in pamphlet form before finally inserting a condensed version of
it
in his second autobiography, _My Bondage and My Freedom_ (1855). "He
was
hopeful," Colaiaco observes, "that if the federal government could be
compelled by moral argument and political necessity to fulfill the
libertarian principles of the Declaration of Independence and the
preamble
to the Constitution, slavery would be abolished everywhere in the United
States" (p. 107).
As his exegesis of antislavery constitutionalism illustrates, Colaiaco's
book nicely balances intense study of Douglass's speech with analysis of
the
myriad of issues swirling around Douglass during the 1850s. Two
concerns
proved most important in the latter years of the decade: the Dred Scott
decision of 1857 and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.
Spending
one chapter on each, Colaiaco shows that Douglass remained conflicted
about
abolitionist tactics and strategies, about America's ability to change,
and
about his ability to change America. Though he extended his antislavery
constitutionalism to combat the Supreme Court's Dred Scott
decision--which
rejected blacks' inclusion in the body politic--Douglass began wondering
about the utility of both moral critique and party politics in the
struggle
for racial justice. "Although Douglass rejected the plan to raid
Harpers
Ferry ... as a strategic blunder, he never disavowed Brown" (p. 136).
In
fact, Colaiaco argues that Douglass believed that "the point of no
return
had been reached [by 1860]: slavery in the South would be destroyed not
by
moral argument or party politics, but by war" (pp. 136-137).
In Colaiaco's fine rendering, Douglass is certainly a master orator and
rhetorician. Yet, Colaiaco also risks drawing a portrait that is a bit
too
studious--Douglass as a policy wonk expounding on the finer points of
natural law. In other treatments of the Fourth of July address,
Douglass
appears to be a prophet, a poet, and a preacher risking his life for a
cause, not a libertarian refining his ideology further and further. For
instance, David W. Blight argues in his _Frederick Douglass's Civil War:
Keeping Faith in Jubilee_ (1989) that already by 1852, Douglass was on
the
verge of apocalyptic thinking, the belief that only through a violent
rending (or breaking from the racist American past) would the United
States
be resurrected as an egalitarian society. Similarly, in his
introduction to
Douglass's autobiography, John Stauffer sees Douglass at this time as a
romantic visionary who imbibed Lord Byron, Robert Burns, and the Bible
every
bit as much as he mastered the Constitution; the Fourth of July address,
Stauffer argues, was a "lament" for a nation gone wrong.[3]
There is also the matter of race. Where John Ernest (in _Liberation
Historiography: African-American Writers and the Challenge of History,
1794
-1861_ [2004]) and Robert S. Levine (in _Martin Delany, Frederick
Douglass,
and the Politics of Representative Identity_ [1997]) see Douglass
struggling
to put race--and not merely abolition--squarely before white audiences
in
the Fourth of July address, Colaiaco says little about this aspect of
Douglass's thought. To be sure, Douglass did not see himself primarily
as a
race thinker. Nevertheless, his life and thought--including key parts
of
the Fourth of July speech--flowed from black protest traditions and
leaders
dating back to the nation's founding. Like too many other commentators,
Colaiaco paints Douglass in largely white shades. There is no mention
of
black intellectual roots, such as Douglass's heroes James Forten or
Richard
Allen (earlier generations of black activists--from slave rebels to
Walker--are cast as revolutionaries, not thinkers). Yet, Douglass
saluted
both men for shaping a vision of black civic equality and loyal
opposition.[4] Forten, Allen, and other black founders had long since
argued that America was a black homeland and the Declaration of
Independence
was the abolitionists' gold. In virtually every decade since the
founding,
some black leader gave a major address shaming American slaveholders and
highlighting black claims to equal citizenship.
Similarly, Colaiaco might have done more with black intellectuals aroundDouglass, particularly James McCune Smith. Douglass's great friend and
literary compatriot rates only a brief mention for writing the preface
to
his colleague's second autobiography. According to Stauffer, however,
McCune Smith exerted an intellectual and emotional influence on the
maturing
Douglass second only to Gerrit Smith (the apostle of antislavery
politics).[5] McCune Smith helped Douglass grapple with the tricky
subject
of racial identity, its perils and promises. From McCune Smith,
Douglass
also learned race pride. This allowed Douglass to stand before his
Rochester audience as both an outraged American and a self-consciously
black
activist wondering--but not really caring--if white America could handle
his
blistering claims and qualms. In one sense, the Fourth of July speech
offered Douglass at his blackest.
In this sense, it is interesting to think about where Douglass fits in
the
recent contretemps over the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's relationship to
presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Many commentators have looked to the
1960s for historical perspective on the matter. It is clear that
Douglass's
Fourth of July speech makes as much sense as a historical backdrop.
Like
Wright, Douglass brought parts of the black Jeremiad tradition of moral
critique painfully before white Americans' eyes. What could be more
damning
than Douglass's blast that "the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed"
and
"its crimes against God and man ... proclaimed and announced" (p. 57)?
Yet,
like Obama, Douglass did not underestimate Americans' need--his need
too--for inspiration. "This nation can change," Obama stated. "I end
with
hope," Douglass concluded in 1852.
None of these critiques or contemporary digressions undermines
Colaiaco's
impressive book, which details more fully than any other text the
mainstream
traditions from which Douglass crafted his transcendent speech. The
point
is merely that Douglass's Fourth of July address, like his broader
political
faith, is capacious and deserving of as wide-ranging analysis as
possible.
Indeed, his famous speech deserves our fullest attention even today.
Having
read it, we can ask if Douglass's words can still inspire us to perfect
American liberty.
Notes
[1]. The speech is available at
http://www.library.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=2945.
[2]. William S. McFeely, _Frederick Douglass_ (New York: Norton, 1991),
172-173.
[3]. John Stauffer, introduction to _My Bondage and My Freedom_, by
Frederick Douglass (New York: Modern Library, 2003). I am indebted to
Stauffer for letting me preview his forthcoming dual biography of
Lincoln
and Douglass, which promises perhaps the most insightful and exciting
treatment of these two giants in some years.
[4]. I treat black founders' influence on Douglass in the introduction
and
conclusion to _Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church,
and
the Black Founding Fathers_ (New York: New York University Press, 2008).
[5]. On McCune Smith's relationship to Douglass in the late 1840s and
early
1850s, see John Stauffer, _The Black Hearts of Men: Radical
Abolitionists
and the Transformation of Race_ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2001),
esp. 160-161.
"Frederick Douglass' Fifth of July Speech."
July 4, 1852 Rochester, New York
Fellow Citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap like as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin. I can today take up the lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes! We wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive, required of us a song and they who wasted us, required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not 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!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being?
The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute-books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that while we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men-digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave-we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer and insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the last, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No; I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy's thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every-day practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
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