The Hypocrisy of American Slavery by Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was a former American slave. He escaped from slavery in 1838 and to avoid new slavery he fled to England. With the help of the English Quakers he was able to purchase his freedom from his former slave owners in 1847; he then returned to live in the United States. Throughout his life he helped escape slaves to Canada American slavery", Douglass had been living in Rochester, New York for several years, editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper called The North Star. He was invited to give a Fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. In the early 1850s , tensions over slavery raged throughout the county. The Compromise of 1850 had not resolved the controversy over admitting new slave states to the Union. The Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress as part of this compromise was hated by the Northern states. Along with these things, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel about slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin, had been published a few months earlier and had become a national bestseller. All across the country people were thinking and arguing about slavery. Douglass was scheduled to give a speech in Rochester, New York, to a group of abolitionists as part of the Fourth of July celebrations. The audience may have expected a celebratory speech, but Douglass offered the exact opposite. He launched an attack on the hypocrisy of the United States. Douglass brought down the nation for celebrating its freedom and independence from Great Britain with parades and marches while there were still millions of African Americans in the United States held enslaved by white plantation owners. They are all in the country... middle of paper... to efficiently "call out" Americans on their absurd and wrong behavior as citizens. Douglass was able to explain to his audience the double standards they were adopting by wanting their freedom from their homeland, but not wanting to give it to African Americans living in their own states. Douglass pointed out that the nation was celebrating a “freedom” that was not truly a “freedom” because it was not given to everyone. Douglass was able to consciously put the American people in the shoes of the slaves for a moment and feel their pain. His use of Aristotelian argumentation helps convey his messages effectively. Douglass' speech to a group of abolitionists in Rochester, New York, on Independence Day 1852, is one of the most powerful speeches ever given in American history. Douglass gave the power to stand and fight for what you believe in.