On 'The Hypocrisy of American Slavery'

This one I did a little differently than normal. While most of my essays have been speaking from my personal perspective, this one tells the story of Frederick Douglass' 4th of July speech from the viewpoint of a contemporary woman and friend of the abolitionists named Isabel Bernard. It was well-recieved by my English teacher, and I plan on writing more unconventional works like this one in the future.

Dearest Lou,

As I am certain you are aware, last week the abolitionists met in Rochester to celebrate our national independence and had invited Mister Douglass to speak. When he did, he thouroughly outlined the hypocrisy of the occasion to a most stunned audience! I had the great fortune to be given a copy of this scathing oration by an associate (whom for privacy and perhaps security's sake will not be named) and I had taken it upon myself to read and analyze it. With some aid from my better-read husband (who as I'm sure you know graduated our state's own university two years past) here are my findings:

1. Mister Douglass brought a considerable amount of attention to the current differences between the lives of the European-descended folk and the African negroes so long in bondage. He consistenty repeated and emphasized that all of the sum of our festivities, feasts and gay feelings was only for those whom the biased law and culture had favored, that it was our holiday and not his or his kin's. My husband pointed out the constant switching between 'You' and 'I' to create a separation as well, a less overt method of division.


2. He addressed the crowd in much the same manner as how a stern mother scolds her child. Besides the obvious sense of indignation, he spoke with sentences that went on and on and on almost halfway through a paragraph in some places! I suppose that the best way to put it would be in his own words: "biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke" were the great themes of that day's speech.


3. Douglass seemed to know in his heart that God himself had detested slavery. On and on he went about what some had claimed was the 'divinity' of slavery when it was not so much as human; that we could be so cruel to the very God-fearing men we were told to love; even that to join us in song would make him like a "reproach before God!"

I could continue writing until I at last fainted of exhaustion, but pray; I have run low on parchment.

Until we write again,

Isabel Bernard