“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

In this passage Douglass expresses his concern for the "American Slave" during a time of salvation. He emphasizes on the a day of American rejoice, is the same day that forces blacks remember all the pain endured, during the very time Independence day was in development.  He seems to speak for all when blacks by  comparing  the nations mockery of  Independence Day to the real action opposed upon slaves, which he quotes as "a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages". Although in the previous passages he praises the founding fathers for reformation thus far, this passage describes the uncertainty and raw emotion of blacks as they try to  distinguish between their past and futures.