During the 1800s in the Americas, Frederick Douglass and African slaves show their desire for freedom to the world. Douglass wrote “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” to express his dismay at the foundations of American values. Because of its acceptance in American society, he considers this holiday to be a revelation about the distance between blacks and whites in American society. Since people refuse to identify slavery as a problem, its goal is to encourage abolitionists and Americans to take a more urgent approach to ending slavery. Due to his frustration, Douglass delivered his 1852 speech with powerful rhetoric to show that the need for the abolition of slavery proved vital to the growth of the United States. Throughout the speech, Frederick Douglass uses his memories of childhood as a slave to elicit sympathy from his audience. As he highlights the hardships faced by American slaves, Douglass uses emotion to show his dismay at the significance of the Fourth of July. Discussing the American slave trade from his perspective, Douglass states that “the custom was very bad…I hated to hear the noise of the chains and the heartbreaking screams” (Douglass 8). Dictions such as “wicked” and “chains” add more dramatic effect to Douglass’s living conditions; it shows that slaves are the people who are suffering by using imagery involving a person trapped in a prison. Since he experienced slavery and escaped, he is currently afraid of being sent back. As Douglass lays out his true feelings about slavery, he says that “anything that serves to perpetuate slavery is the great sin and shame of America” (Douglass 8). Even though Americans come together on July 4 to celebrate their accomplishments, he uses the word "sin" to show that America's accomplishments are worthless because of slavery. Through his emotions and personal flashbacks, Douglass was able to directly attack the audience's emotions. Douglass remembers seeing a young mother “whose shoulders are bare in the hot sun…running tears down the forehead of her baby in her arms” (Douglass 7). It depicts the mother as the victim/outsider in the struggle for independence. Since the shoulders are one of the strongest parts of the human body, Douglass shows that the mother is virtually defenseless. He uses words such as "burning" and "falling" to directly reach the audience.