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Summary
Summary
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 ofthe country in the turbulent years leading to the civil war. This book provides a fascinating new perspective on a critical time in American history.
Author Notes
James A. Colaiaco received his Ph.D. in intellectual history from Columbia, and has for the past twenty-five years taught Great Books at New York University in the General Studies Program at NYU. Colaiaco is author of Socrates against Athens: Philosophy on Trail , Martin Luther King, Jr.: Apostle of Militant Nonviolence , and James Fitzjames Stephen and the Crisis of Victorian Thought .
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
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 2006 Booklist
Choice Review
Few authors have explored Frederick Douglass's break from William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists in such detail as has James Colaiaco (NYU). Casting the break in terms of Douglass's interpretation of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence, Colaiaco examines the intellectual roots of the schism, Douglass's evolving ideology, and his eloquent defense of his analysis from his 1852 Fourth of July Oration through the end of his life. Using many secondary sources for supplemental detail, Colaiaco also employs some of Douglass's key writings, although, curiously, he does not examine the most recent and detailed edition of Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom, part of The Frederick Douglass Papers published by Yale University Press (2004). Detracting from this work's usefulness is unclear or inadequate documentation for quoted material and facts; the misquoting of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address; conflicting descriptions of the Liberty Party's platform; and a misstating of when slavery arrived in Britain's North American colonies. Despite these shortcomings, the work provides a wealth of information about Douglass, his intellectual foundation, and the context for his oratory. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Faculty. J. A. Luckett formerly, San Antonio College
Library Journal Review
Colaiaco (Sch. of Continuing & Professional Studies, NYU; Martin Luther King, Jr.) offers a critical evaluation of the magisterial address that Frederick Douglass, the preeminent African American abolitionist and orator, gave in observance of Independence Day on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, NY. The author studies the gnawing contradictions between the ideals expressed by the men who conceived the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and the American conundrum of freedom deferred that Douglass reckoned with. Douglass's much-reprinted political jeremiad epitomized the speaker's progress toward becoming an independent thinker and pragmatist, a transformational figure whose broader interpretation of the American promise had an impact on President Lincoln during the Civil War. In keeping with Colaiaco's objectives (as well as those of the quintessentially American Douglass), the book also addresses the expansion of liberties for the entire social polity rather than just for blacks. A result of the recent effort by several publishers to bring monographic treatments of significant speeches to the general reading public, this compelling book would be welcome in all public and academic libraries, but especially those seeking to build or enhance their collections on historical African American culture and political rhetoric.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Prologue | p. 1 |
| 1 Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July | p. 7 |
| 2 Narrating America's Revolutionary Past | p. 33 |
| 3 Denouncing America's Present | p. 51 |
| 4 Converting to the United States Constitution | p. 73 |
| 5 The Ominous Future: A Nation on the Brink | p. 109 |
| 6 The Dred Scott Decision and the American Dilemma | p. 139 |
| 7 The United States Constitution Is Anti-Slavery | p. 163 |
| Epilogue | p. 189 |
| Notes | p. 205 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 229 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 239 |
| Index | p. 241 |
