Summary
Douglass begins his speech by welcoming his audience and admitting that he is nervous to deliver his lecture to such an esteemed group of people. He says that, as a former slave, he is less learned than those listening to him, and that he asks for his audience's patience as he delivers his thoughts to the crowd.
Launching into the speech proper, Douglass compares nations to rivers, saying that sometimes they rise majestically and enrich the land, while other times they dry up and leave nothing behind them. Douglass notes that nations operate the same way before recapitulating the story of the American Revolution.
He argues that, in retrospect, it is easy to say that the colonists should have declared independence from England, but at the time, it was unfashionable to say so. He continues his story, noting how England continued to oppress the colonists until the founding fathers drafted the Declaration of Independence. He assures his audience he has nothing but the utmost respect for the founding fathers, saying that though he cannot always see them in the most favorable light, he also cannot deny their bravery, patriotism, and heroism.
Analysis
Readers may notice that, almost immediately, Douglass imbues his speech with a sense of profound irony. He begins by offering a number of self-deprecating suggestions about his knowledge, intellect, and rhetorical skill. He flatters his audience by saying that he is nervous to speak in front of them, and even feeds into whatever prejudice they may have of him as a former slave, arguing that he is less educated and capable as an orator. However, at the same time he advances these modest and humble statements, Douglass's words are anything but unlearned or thrown haphazardly together, as he claims. Indeed, Douglass declares his intellectual inferiority in an artful and rhetorically advanced manner. "You will not therefore be surprised," he tells his audience, "if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high-sounding exordium" (58). Here, Douglass announces to his audience that he plans to speak frankly and plainly. However, his word choice challenges the notion that plain-speaking is also simple speaking. On the contrary, Douglass's words are organized, deliberate, and evidence of his impressive rhetorical deftness.
Such irony would not have been lost on his audience, but Douglass's calls for modesty help destabilize his listeners as he launches into what is a complex intellectual and moral argument about America's relationship to slavery. Before doing so, however, he injects the beginning of his speech (prior to introducing slavery as his primary subject) with images and concepts that lay the groundwork for where his argument leads. The first of these is the metaphor of nations as rivers, as Douglass presents an ominous portrait of a river that dries up, leaving a desolate landscape behind. He then pivots to retelling the story of American independence and the founding fathers, likely fueling patriotism in his audience as they celebrate the Fourth of July. Notably, however, Douglass does not yet connect these ideas to his grand subject of slavery. Instead, he invites his audience to acknowledge the efficacy of these images and stories before pointing out their relevance to his larger argument—relevance that ultimately leads to the revelation that existence of slavey is evidence of extreme American hypocrisy. Douglass therefore frames his speech in a way that encourages his audience to support his logical sentiments before they actually know what, exactly, he plans to argue.
