Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July [Hardcover]

James A. Colaiaco (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1403970335 | ISBN-13: 978-1403970336 | Publication Date: February 7, 2006 | Edition: First Edition

On July 5th, 1852, Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest orators of all time, delivered what was arguably the century's most powerful abolition speech. At a time of year where American freedom is celebrated across the nation, Douglass eloquently summoned the country to resolve the contradiction between slavery and the founding principles of our country. In this book, James A. Colaiaco vividly recreates the turbulent historical context of Douglass' speech and delivers a colorful portrait of the country in the turbulent years leading to the civil war. This book provides a fascinating new perspective on a critical time in American history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at a meeting sponsored by the Rochester (N.Y.) Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. The speech, and indeed the meeting itself, were contrived to provide a counter-celebration to Independence Day. Speaker after speaker, Douglass among them, took aim at the cherished pieties of the nation: the memory of the Revolution, the elusive ideal of liberty for all, and the country's moral and religious foundation. As NYU professor Colaiaco (Socrates Against Athens) makes clear, Douglass's biting oratory on that occasion resonated loudly across a startled country. "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine," he told his white listeners. "You may rejoice, I must mourn." Douglass's remarks dove to the heart of the hypocrisy upon which the American nation had been founded. With incisive analysis and elegant prose, Colaiaco explains the rhetorical atmosphere in which Douglass crafted and delivered his speech. More than one abolitionist by then was rising up to call for a "second American Revolution," to fulfill the spirit of 1776's fine words. Douglass's eloquence added to the sharpness of this clarion call, while also drawing a firm line between the romantic folklore and grim reality of American liberty. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

Antebellum audiences enjoyed patriotic speeches on Independence Day, but a white Rochester, New York, crowd in 1852 was about to be surprised. At the rostrum was their neighbor, Frederick Douglass, who, instead of the expected encomium to the founding of the U.S., delivered a scorching denunciation of the preservation of slavery. A New York University teacher, Colaiaco analyzes this and other speeches, including Douglass' famously ambivalent 1876 commemoration of Abraham Lincoln, via several avenues: paraphrasing and quoting (this work does not reprint the speeches verbatim), rhetorical technique, and constitutional interpretation. The most memorable element in the Rochester speech was Douglass' deployment of the second person to illustrate the chasm between your freedoms as whites under the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and slavery. But as Colaiaco stresses, Douglass held out a redemptive hope, his belief that the Constitution did not in its heart permit slavery. Extending the trend for "biographies" of speeches, Colaiaco's careful study recaptures Douglass' reputation as one of America's greatest orators. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition (February 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403970335
• ISBN-13: 978-1403970336
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,958,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Frederick Douglass Challenges America, June 26, 2006

By 

MNR - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July (Hardcover)

James Colaiaco, also author of an important book on Martin Luther King, Jr. has now written an outstanding study of Frederick Douglass.

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist, delivered an extraordinary speech in Rochester, N.Y., entitled "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Douglass' July 4th oration is the greatest abolition speech of the 19th century. With rhetorical brilliance, Douglass compelled the nation to confront what has been called the "American dilemma," the contradiction between slavery and the ideals of liberty and equal rights proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution. This contradiction between ideals and practice tore the nation apart, leading to the Civil War.

James Colaiaco does a masterful job in weaving together a comprehensive analysis of Douglass' speech and important historical context. This book brings to life a brilliant cast of characters, including William Lloyd Garrison, Abraham Lincoln, John C. Calhoun, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sojourner Truth, and John Brown. Colaiaco's penetrating analysis shows that while Douglass praised America for its liberal ideals, he devoted most of his thirty-page speech to attacking the nation for continuing to allow more than three million black people to live in slavery.

Not only does Colaiaco provide a comprehensive and insightful analysis of Douglass' speech, he also demonstrates how Douglass continued to pursue its major themes in many speeches delivered prior to the Civil War. Among the important speeches the book analyzes is Douglass' condemnation of the 1857 infamous Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court declared that, according to the Constitution, black people were not citizens and did not possess any rights which white people were required to respect. Colaiaco shows how the Dred Scott decision was a stunning defeat for the abolition movement, and aroused a chorus of indignation throughout the North. Abraham expressed the hope that it would be overturned as soon as possible.

Frederick Douglass realized that the Dred Scott decision undermined the message of his 1852 July 4th oration, the contradiction between slavery and America's founding documents. As the nation continued to plummet towards civil war, Douglass delivered a brilliant address in Glasgow, Scotland in 1860. Developing ideas that were rooted in his 1852 July 4th oration, and pursued in many other previous speeches, Douglass challenged the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing the controversial position that, despite certain compromises with "slavery" made by the framers in 1787, the Constitution, when read through the ethical lens of its own Preamble, in addition to the Declaration of Independence, is a great abolition document.

Needless to say, the nation failed to heed Douglass' call to abolish slavery. What could not be resolved by rational discourse, had be be resolved by arms. The Civil War, in which some 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers lost their lives, was a tragedy that Douglass predicted but desperately tried to convince the nation to avert.

This book is ideal for anyone interested in learning how Frederick Douglass, a true American hero, used the power of oratory to defend human rights.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Frederick Douglass and the Promise of America, June 15, 2006

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July (Hardcover)

I read this book by James Colaiaco, a Master Teacher of Great Books at New York University, to help me think about the United States's upcoming Independence Day holiday of July 4, 2006. The book did both less than that and more.

Colaiaco's "Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July Oration" has as its named subject a speech that Douglass (1818 -- 1895) gave in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852, generally known as "What, to the American Slave, is your 4th of July?" In his speech, Douglass paid tribute to the vision and courage of America's founders in their fight for freedom and for independence from Britian. But equally importantly, he excoriated the America of his day for its toleration of the institution of slavery. Using his great oratorical powers, Douglass lashed out at the hypocrisy that would proclaim that "all men are created equal" with self-evident rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" while enslaving 4,000,000 African Americans. Yet Douglass found a reason for hope as he was convinced that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution offered the path to eliminate slavery.

Colaiaco's book is similar in format to books published in recent years analyzing the speeches of Abraham Lincoln in detail. There have been notable books, for example, devoted to Lincoln's Cooper Union Address, the Second Inaugural Address, and, of course, the Gettysburg Address. Douglass was a grand and learned speaker who had escaped from slavery as a young man and who, as was Lincoln, was largely self-taught. His speeches, together with his three autobiographies, richly reward reading.

Although Colaiaco gives a good account of Douglass's celebrated Fourth of July oration, the book is rather broader in scope than that single speech. It discusses Douglass's development as a thinker beginning the time he spent in slavery and concluding, in general, with the end of the Civil War, even though Douglass lived and wrote for an additional 30 years. Most of the book discusses American Constitutional interpretation and Douglass's changing views of the American Constitution. Thus, Colaiaco points out that, upon escaping slavery, Douglass originally was a follower of the abolititonist William Garrison who wanted nothing to do with the American Constitution because he believed it sanctioned slavery. (Ironically, this understanding of the Constitution was shared by the Southern slaveholders.) Gradually, Douglass became convinced that the Declaration and Constitution themselves were powerful weapons against slavery and that the words of the Constitution could be read to support its abolition. (Abraham Lincoln did not go so far. He issued his Emancipation Proclamation under grounds of military necessary and was troubled about whether it would be sustainable in peace time. The result was the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.) Douglass thus broke with Garrison and fought for a political end to slavery within the contours of the American political system and its governing documents. This was a bold and creative step to take. Douglass's way of reading a fundamental legal text remains with us, and controversial, today.

By the time he delivered his Fourth of July oration, Douglass had already broken with Garrison. Colaiaco takes the reader through the speech and points out how Douglass believed change could be attained within American constitutionalism. But most of the book uses the July 4 speech as a springboard for consideration of questions of Constitutional interpretation, the reasons for Douglass's change in his view of the Constitution, the Dred Scott decision, Douglass's relationship with John Brown, and the coming of the Civil War. Colaiaco also discusses several additional speeches of Douglass, including a speech he gave in Glasgow, Scotland in March 1860, "The Constitution of the United States: is it pro-slavery or anti-slavery" and a speech he gave in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1876, "Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln". The book concludes with an analysis of Douglass's reading of the Constitution, including these portions which appear to sanction slavery where it existed without actually using the word.

I found the discussion of constitutional interpretation insightful and stimulating, but it took my attention away from Douglass's Fourth of July speech. The speech deserves detailed treatment in a book, but Colaiaco's book, while leading the reader to think that the speech is its main focus, does something good, but a little different.

On a related note, I was also disappointed that the book does not include the rather lengthy text of Douglass's Fourth of July oration. (Colaiaco's text is only about 200 pages long.) Readers interested enough to pursue a treatment of the speech ought to be given the text so that they can read it for themselves as they study the analysis. Douglass prepared an edited, abriged version of the speech and included it in his second autobiography, which is available from the Library of America series. The speech, together with many of Douglass's other works, is also available in Philip Foner's one-volume edition of "Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings" in the Library of Black America series. Those interested in reading Douglass for themselves, particularly the Fourth of July oration, would do well to turn to one of these sources as they read Colaiaco's fine study.

Robin Friedman

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Power of the Spoken Word, July 28, 2006

By 

M. Lucia - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July (Hardcover)

Colaiaco's Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July will undoubtedly attract many readers. Its elegant prose and masterful interweaving of Douglass' powerful July 4th oration (1852) with the events that brought him to the forefront in the fight against slavery make this book a must read for anyone interested in understanding the issues that led to the tragic Civil War.
Colaiaco demonstrates Douglass' consummate rhetorical ability and illuminates the careful thought he gave to arrive at an anti-slavery interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. This book goes beyond Douglass' July 4th oration to illuminate other important speeches of Douglass, including his attack upon the infamous Dred Scott decision (1857) as well as his brilliant 1860 speech on the Constitution as an abolition document.
Having read this book, I can better understand how Douglass compelled America to confront the shameful contradiction of slavery in a nation whose founding documents-- the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution-- professed liberty, justice, and equal rights for all.
Colaiaco's writing talent lies in his ability to make difficult matters accessible even to those who are not American history scholars. Readers will comprehend the power of the spoken word to affect a nation. This book, more than any other I have read, demonstrates the prominence of Frederick Douglass' oratory in arousing the conscience of many against slavery in the years prior to the Civil War. This is the only book I know that analyzes Douglass' July 4th speech, placing it among the greatest speeches in American history.
Kudos to James Colaiaco for writing an excellent book on an important historical period that combines elegant prose and incisive analysis. This book deserves a place among the celebrated works on American history.