What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

The Fourth of July
The Fourth of July is a very special symbol that means more things than most people think. For the great majority of America, is a symbol of independence from England and the freedom and liberty which accompanies that independence. Douglass declares it to be a very different symbol for slaves: a symbol of injustice and cruelty and victimhood.

The Christian Church
Christianity becomes a very dark symbol in this portrait of America. Douglass points, rightly, that the many ministers and church leaders actually found a way to use to defend their grotesquely bizarre claim that God confers approval upon the institution of slavery. This, among other failings, is what leads the Christian church in America to situated symbolically as a protective wall providing a bulwark against abolition, emancipation and the dismantling of the entire system of slavery in the south.