Frederick Douglass Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nations bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic;for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, andlet the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever! He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. 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. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. These rules are well established. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. Space is comparatively annihilated. Racist Ex-University Of Kentucky 'Karen' Sophia Rosing Is Charged For Assaulting Black Student. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. They were great in their day and generation. This is a primary source reading analysis of Frederick Douglass' famous speech. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! As with rivers so with nations. Extend your content reach and maximize your engagement rates. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. I must mourn. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. 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. When Douglass delivered his famous The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro address before an audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, WebIn December 1860, the great American orator and former slave Frederick Douglass delivered one of his finest speeches, A Plea for Free Speech in Boston. In it, he boldly declared that liberty is meaningless where the right to utter ones thoughts and As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent African-American professional men in celebration of the twenty-first anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.After the toast provided by former Senator Blanche K. Bruce, Roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. The Fugitive SlaveLawmakes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. Difference between Rittenhouse and McMichael-Bryan verdicts? Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? in 1852, drawing parallels between the Revolutionary War and the fight to abolish slavery. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Is a matter, the set with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, thenwill I argue with you that the slave is a man! He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans, if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will in the name of humanity, which is outraged in the name of Liberty, which is fettered in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon dare to call and question and to denounce with all the emphasis I can command everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. And the conscience of the nation must be roused. Fellow citizens, above your national tumultuous joy I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains heavy and grievous yesterday are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. I am not included within the pales of this glorious anniversary. Your President, your Secretary of State, ourlords,nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852 . Yea! 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. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. Full transcript of the famous speech What to the Slave is the 4th of July? by Frederick Douglass. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed. Oh, had I, the ability, and could I reach the nations ear, I would today pour out a fiery steam of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of. The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority ofHimby whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example or the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teachthat we ought to obey mans law before the law of God. Who can reason on such a proposition? I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slaves point of view. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming hand-bills, headed CASH FOR NEGROES. Go search where you will. It is neither. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most sacrilegious and shocking and would make me a reproach before God and the world. WebOn December 3, 1860, Frederick Douglass and a group of fellow abolitionists met at the Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston for a discussion centered around the following There is not a nation of the earth, guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. We thank you for taking the time to watch this community reading of Frederick Douglasss What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Source: Blight, David. How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. Towards the end of WebOn July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Douglass was a powerful The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The most accurate AI-powered transcription on the market. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem the Fugitive Slave Law as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, andnota vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. That point is conceded already. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. The anti-slavery movementtherewas not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? In the summer of 2020, the U.S. commemorated Independence Day amid nationwide In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet. The style and title of your sovereign people (in which you now glory) was not then born. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an Independence Day celebration organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. Frederick Douglass's, What To the Slave Is the Fourth of There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, who does not know that slavery is wrong for him. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. A Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1860) | Constitution Center Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? Speech Discover why Rev is the #1 speech-to-text service in the world. Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. The Bible addresses all such persons as scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe ofmint, anise,andcumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.. In a very telling sign, the fateful words of Frederick Douglass from a speech he delivered 170 years ago still resonate very much in 2022 as Black people in America continue the fight for the same kind of equality that the legendary abolitionist was demanding back in the mid-19th century. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. The din of business, too, is hushed. There is blasphemy in the thought. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! No, I will not. Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. But, to proceed. I cannot. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his body? In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried mens souls. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions. To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. When Douglass delivered his famous The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro address before an audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, he was issuing a scathing indictment of American hypocrisy, Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy reminded readers. Suicide Note Revealed After Shocking Death, Mississippi Cops Beat, Waterboarded Handcuffed Black Men, Shot 1 For Dating White Women': Lawyers, Indicted!