Objectives:

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Introduction:

Calls for civility are common features of contemporary political discourse, and teaching high school students how to engage in civil discourse over contentious issues is of obvious importance. Calls for civility, however, do not always distribute burdens equally. This is particularly true in cases where someone is called on to defend the legitimacy of their own identity. When these issues arise in the classroom or beyond, some students may take demands to debate as existential attacks, while others may take an unwillingness to engage in a “rational debate” as a sign of bad faith or a weak argument. There is no easy solution, but students may benefit from examining parts of the American political tradition that recognize the importance of argument but that do not treat civility as a supreme virtue in political discourse. Frederick Douglass famously excoriated those who called on abolitionists to “persuade more and denounce less.” The lesson below introduces students to the concept of a philosophical argument, identifies the different ways that Douglass employs them in his Fourth of July oration, calls for students to assess his claims about the limitations of those arguments and of the role of harsh criticism in motivating people to act.

Time requirements: The lesson below is broken into steps to allow instructors to use as much or as little as they desire. Some instructors may prefer to use only Steps One and Two to enrich a discussion of Douglass’ speech while others may set aside a full class for the entire lesson. The full lesson can be completed in 50 minutes, but teachers with longer class periods will have more flexibility with discussions.

Materials Required:

Frederick Douglass’s 1852 4th of July Speech (sometimes called “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”)

This lesson focuses on material between paragraphs 36-43. Students may read this for homework or as part of Step 2.

Goals: Identify philosophical argument in non-fiction texts.

Apply philosophical arguments from historical text to contemporary issues.

Distinguish between the following claims: “There is a good argument for this social policy” and “I am obligated to offer an argument for this social policy.”

Relevant Common Core standards for Common Core schools:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.5, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.8, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.5, and CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.8

Other resources: See Additional Resources Tab

Step Zero: Preparation

Before starting this lesson, students should have some basic familiarity with slavery and abolitionism in the United States and with Frederick Douglass. This lesson does not require that students read selections from Douglass’ 4th of July speech before beginning this lesson, but reading at least paragraphs 36-42 is recommended.

This lesson presumes no background knowledge of philosophical arguments on the part of teachers or students. However, teachers who have already covered the concepts like validity and soundness with their classes may still find the lesson useful as an opportunity to practice identifying and analyzing arguments in an historical context. Teachers who would like to cover those concepts can find lessons on them in the PLATO Toolkit.

Step One: What is an Argument? (5 Minutes).

Note: Step One can be replaced by a separate lesson on arguments if teachers would like to cover concepts like validity or soundness. Teachers who have already covered validity and soundness may wish to replace Step One with Appendix Step One: Validity and Soundness Review at the end of this document.

Tell the class: “Today we will be examining arguments in Fredrick Douglass’ 1852 4th of July speech. Sometimes when we say “argument” we mean something like “a fight” but that’s not the sort of argument we will be talking about today. When we say “argument” today, we’ll be referring to something like this:”

Write the following on the board:

Premise 1: All men are mortal.

Premise 2: Socrates is a man.

Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Tell the class: “This is an argument because it attempts to lead the reader from a set of claims—called ‘premises’—to a conclusion. We use these kinds of arguments all the time even if we don’t write them out so formally. They are especially common in persuasive writing. There is a lot more that can be said about them, but for our purposes the important thing to see is that

Arguments are not fights or simple disagreements.
Rather, they are a way to use premises to lead the reader to a conclusion.”

Leave the argument up on the board so students can use it as a model when constructing their arguments in Step 2.

Step Two: Arguments in Moral and Political Disputes (10 Minutes).

Tell the class:

“I mentioned that arguments are especially common in persuasive writing, so let’s look for some in Frederick Douglass’ 1852 4th of July Speech.

We’ll look specifically at paragraphs 36-42. With your partner (or in a small group) try to construct an argument with two premises and a conclusion based on what Douglass is saying.”

If students identify the argument discussed in Step 3, skip ahead to Step 3.

Otherwise, students will likely identify something like the following argument:

Premise 1: All slaves are humans.

Premise 2: All humans are entitled to liberty.

Conclusion: Therefore, all slaves are entitled to liberty.

Sources for the argument for the instructor’s reference:

Premise 1 can be drawn from paragraph 36. The most relevant text is, “Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it.”

Premise 2 can be drawn from paragraph 38. The most relevant text is, “Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it.”

The conclusion follows from Premise 1 and Premise 2. If all slaves are humans and all humans are entitled to liberty, then all slaves are entitled to liberty. This conclusion, of course, is a central tenet of the abolitionist movement.

Tell the class:

“Notice how the premises of this argument are related to the conclusion. If the premises are true, could the conclusion be false?”

The answer should be no. The conclusion could not be  false if the premises are true.

If you have covered the concepts of soundness and validity in an earlier class, you may want to invoke them here. However, it is enough for the purposes of this lesson that students see that there is a relationship between the premises and conclusion. that have this feature are called valid arguments.

Ask the class:

“Are the premises true?”

The answer should be yes.

“So is the conclusion true?”

The answer should be yes.

Optional: If students identify the argument above much more quickly than expected, tell the class:

“A persuasive writer doesn’t just state the premises and move on. She offers evidence to support them. What evidence does Douglass offer to support the premise, ‘All slaves are humans’”?

Here, students should identify elements from paragraphs 36 and 37. In paragraph 36, Douglass contrasts the way the law treats slaves with the way it treats animals, arguing that this shows that even slaveholders acknowledge that slaves are humans. He points out that both slaves and whites are subject to punishment under the criminal law, while animals are not. Furthermore, there are laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read or write but no such laws prohibiting the teaching of animals to read or write. If slaves were not human, it would be difficult to explain these differences.

In paragraph 37, Douglass highlights the similarities of Black people and others by providing a variety of examples of “enterprises common to other men” that Black people are also engaged in: plowing, planting, acting as clerks, teachers, poets, thinking, moving, living in families, etc. If slaves were not human, it would be difficult to explain these similarities.

Douglass does not offer this kind of support for the second premise for reasons discussed in the next step. Teachers who would like to pursue the point, however, may ask students to come up with evidence to support the second premise on their own, e.g. “Suppose we wanted to offer some evidence to support the claim that all humans are entitled to liberty. What sort of evidence could we offer?”

Step Three: Rejecting Demands for Argument (10 minutes).

Note: The bulk of the text in this step is provided for the instructor’s reference. When actually delivering the lesson, most of the time in Step 3 will be spent allowing students to construct a new argument from Douglass’ remarks in paragraphs 36-42.

At this point, it may seem to the students that this section of Douglass’ speech is an argument against slavery, but that’s not quite right. Douglass’ speech occurs in the context of disputes about the tactics abolitionists should pursue. As Douglass puts it in paragraph 36, his critics would have him “persuade more and rebuke less.” The argument in Step 2 is an example of the kind of persuasion those critics had in mind. Abolitionists would win more people to their cause, these critics claimed, by offering calm, polite, philosophical arguments to prove that slavery is wrong.

Douglass rejects that demand emphatically. He does provide an argument against slavery as we saw in Step 2, but it is subordinate to a larger argument about what his critics can and cannot ask of him. That is, Douglass provides a philosophical argument against slavery in the context of showing his audience why it is wrong to make such a demand.

Tell the class:

“The argument we just discussed is an important one for Douglass, but it isn’t the most important argument he makes in this section. With your partner (or in a small group) try to construct another argument with two premises and a conclusion based on what Douglass says in paragraphs 36-42.”

(If you are short on time or if you worry the class will not be able to construct the argument, tell the class that the most important argument is the one reproduced below, write it on the board, and skip to Step Four.)

Students may identify something like:

Premise 1: Where all is plain [i.e., obvious], there is nothing to be argued.

Premise 2: The points of the anti-slavery creed are plain.

Conclusion: Therefore, there is nothing to be argued with respect to the anti-slavery creed.

This is not a bad gloss of Douglass and it tracks his text closely, but “there is nothing to be argued” does not capture Douglass’ criticism of the demand for argument that runs through this section.  If students propose something like that, tell them, “This is close to the argument that Douglass is making, but ‘There is nothing to be argued’ is a bit vague. I want to be sure we capture the spirit of what Douglass is saying about his critics’ demands for argument, so I will modify the argument a bit.”  One way of doing that would be:

Premise 1: It is inappropriate to demand arguments to prove something that is obvious.

Premise 2: The points of the anti-slavery creed are obvious.

Conclusion: Therefore, it is inappropriate to demand arguments to prove the points of the anti-slavery creed.

Tell the class, “The ‘points of the anti-slavery creed’ are just the core beliefs of abolitionism. They include the premises and conclusion of the argument in Step 2, i.e. that all slaves are humans, that all humans are entitled to liberty, and that all slaves are entitled to liberty.

Sources for each premise:

Premise 1 is drawn from the first four sentences of paragraph 36.

“But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue?”

Premise 2 is drawn from Douglass’ discussion of key abolitionist claims in paragraphs 36-41, i.e. that slaves are humans in paragraphs 36 and 37, that humans are entitled to liberty in paragraph 38, and that slavery is wrong in paragraphs 38 and 39. In each case, Douglass either presents the claim as too obvious to deny or as one that everyone already accepts.

On whether slaves are humans:

In paragraph 36, Douglass says, “Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? The point is conceded already. That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of their laws for their government.”

In paragraph 37, Douglass points out the obvious fact that Black people are engaged in all the same kinds of activities that other humans do.

On whether all humans are entitled to liberty:

In paragraph 38, Douglass says, “Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it.”

Students may find this point more compelling if they are reminded that this is a 4th of July speech. Douglass and the audience are pointedly aware that the day commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the second sentence of which is, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

With that context, students will Douglass elaborates later in paragraph 38, “How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? . . . . To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.”

On whether slavery is wrong:

In paragraph 38, Douglass says “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know slavery is wrong for him.”

In paragraph 39, Douglass describes the horrific, brutal treatment of slaves, asking if argument is really necessary to show that it is wrong to (among other things) hunt humans with dogs, knock out their teeth, burn their flesh, beat them with sticks, destroy their families.

Step Four: Reasons for Rejecting Demands for Argument

Tell the class:

“We can ask the same questions about this argument as we did about the last argument. If the premises are true, could the conclusion be false?”  The answer should be no. If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.

“Is the first premise true?”

Students are likely to disagree or be uncertain about their answers even if they are disposed to accept it. If so, note this, saying something along the lines of “I notice that people don’t seem as certain as they did with the previous argument.”

“What about the second premise? Is it true?”

Again, expect some disagreement or uncertainty.

Alternative: If time is short or the class is prone to wander off topic in discussions, the teacher may ask students to raise their hands to indicate their answers to two previous questions, saying  something like, “We’re going to discuss the premises in a moment, but first I want to take a survey. Raise your hand if you think the first premise is true.  Okay. Raise your hand if you think the second premise is true.”

Tell the class:

“A persuasive writer doesn’t just state the premises and move on. She offers evidence to support them. With your partner or in small groups, find evidence Douglass offers to support the premise, ‘The points of the anti-slavery creed are obvious’”?

Here, students should identify the elements in described in Step 3 as sources for Premise 2, e.g., “In paragraph 36, Douglass says, ‘Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? The point is conceded already. That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of their laws for their government.’”

“What about the first premise? It is stated in very general terms and doesn’t apply only to arguments about slavery, so let’s try to answer in general terms. What are some reasons we might give for thinking it is inappropriate to demand arguments for something that is obvious?”

Students may reiterate that the premises in step 2 are obviously true, so argument is unnecessary. They may also say that the demand itself is inconsiderate. Demanding that someone provide an argument for something obvious is a demand that she waste her time. Douglass suggests something similar in paragraph 39 when he says “Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.”

“Now I want you to think in more specific terms about the demands being made of Douglass. What are some reasons we might give for thinking it is inappropriate to demand arguments from Douglass in this speech?”

It may take a moment, but students should realize that asking Douglass to prove that he is human and entitled to freedom is deeply insulting on its own. The fact that the argument being requested is unnecessary (because he obviously is human and entitled to freedom) only makes the demand all the more insulting.

If students need help, ask them, “What’s wrong with asking Douglass, a former slave, to prove that he is a human?” Students should be able to say something about the request being insulting and disrespectful.

Similarly, ask students “What is wrong with asking Douglass to prove he is entitled to liberty in a 4th of July speech?”  Students should be able to recognize the irony of asking him to prove he is entitled to liberty in a Fourth of July celebration, meant to commemorate the Declaration of Independence that declares “[A]ll men are created equal” and are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The fact that he is asked to prove he is entitled to liberty *even in a 4th of July speech* only deepens the insult. This is part of the reason he says that the 4th of July is not his celebration.

Step Five: Alternatives to Argument (10 Minutes).

Tell the class:

“We’ve seen Douglass argue that slaves are entitled to freedom, and we’ve seen him argue that demands that he make such arguments are inappropriate, and even deeply insulting. Even so, you might think that he ought to make those arguments anyway in order to win people over to the abolitionist cause.  That is essentially the view Douglass attributes to his critics in paragraph 36 when they abolitionists would better advance their cause if they would ‘persuade more and rebuke less.’

Notice we’ve already seen Douglass’ answer to that. What is it?”

Students should answer something along the lines of “Abolitionists don’t need to offer an argument to persuade anyone that slavery is wrong because everyone already knows that slavery is wrong. And besides, the request is demeaning.”

“Here is the crucial question: What then, does Douglass propose to do instead of offer arguments?”

Answer: Motivate people to act on what they already know is true, i.e. that slavery is wrong.

Paragraph 41 is the relevant text. “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. . . . The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”

If students need a hint to reach this conclusion, the instructor may tell them, “Suppose that Douglass is right and everyone knows that the premises and conclusion of the argument in Step 2 are true. If Douglass doesn’t need to persuade people that those claims are true, what is left for the abolitionists to do?” (Answer: Motivate people to act on what they already know is true, i.e. that slavery is wrong!)

Homework or Discussion (for longer or subsequent classes):

For homework or in class, ask students to find a contemporary example of someone arguing that a social movement should “persuade more and rebuke less.” Discuss whether any of these movements could employ the argument Douglass uses in Step Four.

Asking students to consider contemporary political movements can be touchy, and teachers will need to exercise their own judgment over how to manage these discussions. It can be helpful to remind students to focus on the legitimacy of the demands that someone provide an argument, specifically: Do people dispute the premises, or do people need to be motivated to act on what they already know is true? Are the demands to prove a premise inherently insulting, as is the case with demands that Douglass prove he is human or entitled to freedom?

Ideally, students will come away from the lesson with a better appreciation for Douglass’ speech, a better understanding of the structure of arguments, and a more nuanced view of the role of and demand for philosophical argument in contemporary political discourse.

Appendix Step One: Validity and Soundness Review

An argument is valid if the conclusion must be true if the premises are true.  An argument is sound if the argument is valid and the premises are, in fact, true. The argument above is valid and sound.

If students are confused or time permits, the teacher could offer examples of arguments that are not valid or sound and valid but not sound. Two examples follow.

Not valid or sound:

Premise 1: All humans have four legs.

Premise 2: All butterflies have four legs.

Conclusion: Therefore, all humans are butterflies.

This argument is not valid because even if the first two premises were true, the conclusion could be false. All humans having four legs and all butterflies having four legs would not entail that all humans are butterflies any more than all dogs are cats.

This argument is not sound because it is not valid and because the first two premises are false.

Valid but not sound:

Premise 1: All humans have four legs.

Premise 2: Socrates is a human.

Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates has four legs.

The argument is valid because the conclusion must be true IF the premises are true. It is not sound because Premise 1 is not true.