Read the excerpt from "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? What is the purpose of this rhetorical question as it used by Douglass?

Douglass asks the question to lead into his explanation of what Independence Day means to enslaved people. He answers that it exposes the injustice and hypocrisy of celebrating liberty while denying freedom to slaves. The question is therefore designed to introduce that central idea, not to obtain information.

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