What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

Multiple Choice and Long Answer questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, unit exam, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. Which type of argument/appeal is least emphasized in Douglass’s speech?

A) Logos, or appeals to logic and reason

B) Pathos, or appeals to emotion

C) Ethos, or appeals to morality and character

D) Political arguments rooted in an understanding of the law

2. Which statement best summarizes the thesis of Douglass’s argument?

A) “This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. [...] It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance.”

B) “I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a national trait—perhaps a national weakness.”

C) “To [the enslaved], your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license [...] There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”

D) “My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view.”

3. Which statement represents a major shift in Douglass’s tone and rhetoric during the address?

A) “Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress.”

B) “My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now.”

C) “You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence.”

D) “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?”

4. Which words best describe the tonal shifts in this address?

A) From camaraderie, to incredulity, to despair

B) From fellowship, to chastisement, to fear

C) From reverence, to chastisement, to hope

D) From camaraderie, to insult, to indifference

5. Which of Douglass’s prevailing metaphors allows him to make this tonal shift most effectively?

A) His comparing America to an immature child

B) His notion that great storms create great change, but not without destruction

C) His metaphor that America is a storm-tossed boat

D) His comparing America to other nations that have already abolished slavery

6. Upon which two documents does Douglass base his moral and ethical arguments?

A) The Qur’an and the Bible

B) The Bible and the Declaration of Independence

C) The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

D) The Constitution and the Bible

7. Douglass states, “Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment.” How does this sentence serve Douglass rhetorically?

A) It makes the audience feel good about their forefathers, which makes them feel friendly toward Douglass’s critical speech.

B) It draws a connection between the experiences of the country’s forefathers and those of enslaved African Americans.

C) It creates distance between the mistakes of the past and the corrective measures being taken in the present.

D) It provides Douglass with a segue he can use to introduce some poetry he wrote himself.

8. Which of the following devices does the most to support Douglass’s arguments?

A) Allusion

B) Imagery

C) Anaphora

D) Juxtaposition

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. Why might Douglass express nervousness at the beginning of his speech?

2. Douglass describes the nation’s founders this way: “The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration.” What is Douglass’s vantage point in American society? What does it mean that he can be in that position and still admire what the founders did and stood for?