"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" by Frederick Douglass: List 4

In this powerful speech delivered on July 5, 1852, abolitionist Frederick Douglass argued that the practice of slavery was antithetical to the American values of liberty and freedom.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. enjoin
    give instructions to or direct somebody to do something
    A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind.
  2. bulwark
    a protective structure of stone or concrete
    It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters.
  3. infidel
    a person who does not acknowledge your god
    They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done!
  4. entreat
    ask for or request earnestly
    It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.”
  5. ameliorate
    make better
    There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty.
  6. anathema
    a formal ecclesiastical curse accompanied by excommunication
    You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina.
  7. avarice
    extreme greed for material wealth
    You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty.
  8. palter
    be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead
    To palter with us in a double sense:
    And keep the word of promise to the ear,
    But break it to the heart.
  9. fiat
    a legally binding command or decision
    The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force.
  10. galling
    causing irritation or annoyance
    God speed the year of jubilee
    The wide world o’er
    When from their galling chains set free,
    Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee
  11. yoke
    an oppressive power
    And wear the yoke of tyranny
    Like brutes no more.
  12. thrall
    someone held in bondage
    That hour will come, to each, to all,
    And from his prison-house, the thrall
    Go forth.
  13. rend
    tear or be torn violently
    Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
    With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
    To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
    The spoiler of his prey deprive —
    So witness Heaven!
Created on Mon Jun 02 19:19:11 EDT 2025 (updated Mon Jun 02 19:24:49 EDT 2025)

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