Quote:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than
all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”

The real subject of his speech, he concedes, is American slavery. He condemns America for being untrue to its founding principles, its past, and its present. He felt that festivities such as the 4th of July are something not worth celebrating because it defines the cruel history of slavery and that society doesn’t acknowledge these events.

Quote:

“The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it
in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish
disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia,
which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be,) subject him to the
punishment of death”

Douglass admits that the government is disinterested or denies the injustice and the mistreatment of slaves . As he speaks on this, he draws from his own experiences and sheds light on the terror of American Slavery.