Frederick Douglass' Argument in the Essay

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After establishing that it is conceded that African-Americans are humans, Douglass moves on to the proposition that he should not be called upon to prove that humans are entitled to liberty. He points out that Americans have already declared that man is entitled to liberty and freedom. He points out that all men resist slavery and feel it is wrong for another person to claim ownership of them. He also points out the brutal side of slavery, and argues that no person could argue that those things were somehow right including: beatings, lashings, shackling, hunting them with dogs, split out families, knocking out their teeth, selling them at auction, and starvation. He believes that it is ridiculous to expect him to argue that a system that includes all of these horrors is wrong.

Douglass' also tackles the common argument during the time that slavery was a divinely ordained condition or institution. He believes it to be blasphemy to suggest that slavery is divine. He does not flesh out this argument, simply stating that the inhuman cannot be divine. Instead, he states that slavery is a crime against both man and God.

In making his speech, Douglass tackles the three most commonly used excuses justifying slavery: the alleged inhumanity of slaves, the idea that slaves were not entitled to liberty, and the idea that slavery was divinely ordained.

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However, instead of making his own arguments in favor of these factors, his basic approach was to use existing arguments, acknowledged by slaveholders that supported his statements. First, he showed how the laws established by slaveholding states already recognized the humanity of slaves. Second, he used a combination of the American enthusiasm for liberty and a list of how slavery deprived African-Americans of their liberty to demonstrate that the deprivation of liberty that came with slavery was morally wrong. Finally, he approached the third argument that people made in support of slavery, which was that slavery was divinely inspired. However, Douglass failed to flesh out this argument. He simply made the statement that what was inhuman could not be divine.

By demonstrating the ways that slavery was anathema to America's stated support of liberty for all humans, Douglass demonstrated why he believed that the Fourth of July celebration of independence was an exercise in hypocrisy because of the institution of slavery, which kept so many Americans in bondage. In fact, rather than considering America the freest nation in time or history, he believed America to be the most shamelessly hypocritical nation in all of history. This was because it not only practiced the same barbaric traditions as other countries, but did so while professing to embrace the ideals of freedom and liberty for all mankind......

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