{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01932367149758454, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003864734299516908, 'mean_word_length': 5.1301775147929, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Frederick Douglass’ use of comparison in his Fourth of July oration: A textual criticism

This essay is a textual analysis of Frederick Douglass’ 1852 What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July oration. Douglass’ oration is analyzed in light of his change of opinion on the Constitution as a pro‐slavery document. Situating the speech in the context of Douglass’ change of opinion on the Constitution and his split with the Garrisonians provides a fuller appreciation of the speech as a denning rhetorical moment in Douglass’ career and advances an historical understanding of the speech. The “close reading” of the text considers Douglass’ use of comparison via thesis and antithesis as the organizing principle of his speech and as the primary rhetorical strategy by which he adapted the epideictic occasion of the Fourth of July oration to the task of making “the past useful” in “behalf of emancipation” and advanced an interpretational consistency among the abolitionists cause, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.