Question

Read the excerpt from Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Which phrase best describes the connotation of the word “reigns”?
a sense of opportunity and growth
a sense of fear and anxiety
a sense of compassion and humanity
a sense of oppression and domination

Answer 1

A sense of oppression and domination

Answer 2

I would say that the phrase that best describes the connotation of the word reigns in this excerpt from Frederick Douglass's speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? is the last one: a sense of oppression and domination.

Step-by-step explanation:

In this excerpt, the speaker is trying to show his audience that, after all the experiences around the world they could get, they will end up choosing America's freedom and way of living. The message is: “go travel the world and compare this way of living with others, and you will come back and appreciate this one”; because, after all, America has no rival. The word reigns, in this excerpt means domination, prevalence, and it involves a sense of oppression because the region is under a certain domain and people there live by those rules.