Introduction: "Fellow citizens, pardon me, and 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?" (I know it's 2 sentences but I think those two really establish the entire speech. It gets his point across immediately.)
Narration: "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." and "America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future." (He is establishing the current state of things with description, perfectly narrating the path of the nation.) Division: "What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being. The manhood of the slave is conceded." (This line, and the next section, all show the two sides in the argument, and Douglass absolutely destroys the other side with his words.) Proof: "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." (Douglass uses the opposite side's own laws against them in his proof to support his claim.) Refutation: "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 shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; 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- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages." (Absolutely obliterates the other side with an outright refusal of everything that they stand for.) Conclusion: "Go 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 everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival." (Perfectly sums up his point in a concise yet eloquent manner.)
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AuthorLuke Hand |