WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY? By Frederick Douglass

Extract from an Oration, at Rochester, July 5, 1852

Fellow-Citizens-Pardon me, and 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? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings, resulting from your independence to us?

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? . . .

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting.

Read this line from the text:

 

What does the jubilation on the Fourth of July reveal to Douglass?

A. The importance of freedom for all citizens

B. The compassion of the nation

C. The gathering anger of the slaves

D. The great distance between slaves and citizens

 

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.

How does the phrase "high independence" clarify Douglass's characterization of the crowd and the event?

A. High independence suggests things are not going well for the country, including the audience members.

B. High independence relates to the sorrow the country feels for the misguided policies it upholds.

C. High independence further describes the celebration, echoing the word glorious in the previous sentence.

D. High independence implies the celebrators are unnecessarily loud, contradicting the word pale in the previous sentence.

 

 

Who does Douglass claim to speak for in this speech?

A. Those bleeding children of sorrow this day

B. The character and conduct of this nation

C. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence

D. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you

 

 

Which of the following correctly explains what Douglass means by the phrase "sad sense of disparity between us"?

A. The difference between the ideals of the Founding Fathers and the people in the audience

B. The difference between the quality of life for those who are free and those who are not

C. The difference between the values of the enslaved and the values of most Americans

D. The difference between those who asked him to speak and those who care about slavery

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Fall of the House of Usher, excerpt By Edgar Allan Poe

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality-of the constrained effort of the ennuyé¹Â man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity;-these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence-an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy-an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision-that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation-that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.

¹Bored

 

What is the effect of the description of the room in the first paragraph?

A. Words like trellised panes and vast distance create a feeling of brightness and light.

B. Words like atmosphere of sorrow and failed to give any vitality create a dark, unsettling mood.

C. Words like instruments lay scattered and atmosphere of sorrow create a sense of chaos.

D. Words like long, narrow, and vast create a sense of growing openness.

 

 

Which words and phrases from the text illustrate the narrator's first impression of Usher?

A. Stern, deep, irredeemable

B. Sufficiently distinct, wild gossamer

C. Abrupt, weighty, unhurried

D. Vivacious warmth, perfect sincerity

 

 

In this excerpt, the narrator notes that Usher is "alternately vivacious and sullen." Which pair of phrases from the passage most clearly illustrates this contrast between being "vivacious" and being "sullen" in Usher's behavior?

A. Animated/brooding

B. Balanced/impulsive

C. Concerned/exclusive

D. Complicated/menacing

 

 

Which line from the description of the room most indicates "sorrow" and "irredeemable gloom"?

A. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes

B. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed

C. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered.

D. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about

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