Audio versions of the speech from the Massachusetts Humanities Council (scroll down).Īn edited version of Douglass’s speech is provided below.Podcast from BackStory with the American History Guys: David Blight on the historical context of Douglass’s speech.Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Or Life among the Lowly.Yale historian David Blight analyzes Douglass's speech and discusses its historical context in an episode of the podcast BackStory with the American History Guys (scroll down to the episode 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?'). Across the country, people were thinking and arguing about slavery, abolitionism, and the future of the nation. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Or Life among the Lowly had been published a few months before and unexpectedly became a national bestseller. The Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress as part of this compromise was bitterly resented by the Northern states. The Compromise of 1850 had failed to resolve the controversy over the admission of new slaveholding states to the Union. In the early 1850s, tensions over slavery were high across the county. He was invited to give a fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. The Frederick Douglass Papers-Library of CongressĪt the time of the delivery of this speech, Douglass had been living in Rochester, New York for several years editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper.What is now known as the 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' speech was delivered on Jas an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. Before you read the speech you can follow these links to learn more about Douglass’s life and the evolution of his thought in this period. During the Civil War he worked tirelessly for the emancipation of enslaved African Americans and during the decades following the war, he was arguably the most influential African American leader in the nation. Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a former slave who became a nationally recognized abolitionist orator during the antebellum period.

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