They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. I lived on Philpot Street, Fells Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. What was possible for him, he sincerely believed was possible for any man who was willing to work hard. 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. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. What then remains to be argued? You have already declared it. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation? The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? As with rivers so with nations. had I the ability, and could I reach the nations ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Under Title 17 U.S.C. To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. You may well cherish the memory of such men. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. You know what is a swine-drover? The din of business, too, is hushed. But I admit, where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued. 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! 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. Frederick Douglass: (09:38) But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cumin abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? From police shootings to the wage gap to crippling stereotypes (and everything in between), there are too many parallels today with what Douglass described in his speech to white America, including this relevant line: This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. Americans! It was, Milloy continued, a critique of a nation that claimed to hold dear the principles of freedom, justice and equality even as it enslaved black people.. Frederick Douglass: (02:57) My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, andthugs. 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. By that act, Mason and Dixons line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. 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. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. Who can reason on such a proposition? With head, and heart, and hand Ill strive, 8 Times Obama Showed Trump How Presidents Are Supposed To Celebrate The Fourth Of July, Welcome To The Cookout: 10 Lit Movies To Watch During July Fourth Holiday Weekend, 'Dilbert' Comic Creator Calls Black People A 'Hate Group,' Urges Segregation So Whites Can 'Escape', Bernie Mac Show Star Camille Winbush Is Not Ashamed Of Joining OnlyFans, Kyle Rittenhouse Faces 2nd Civil Lawsuit, Continues To Beg For Money From His Supporters, Ben Stein's 'Aunt Jemima' Rant Is A Master Class On White Privilege, Why Did tWitch Kill Himself? Speech-to-Text API for pre-recorded audio, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition engine. In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; buthow, we ask, could such a thing be done? The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. This is esteemed by some as a national trait perhaps a national weakness. The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper. Build with the best speech-to-text APIs around. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? I will show you a man-drover. 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 It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. That, which is inhuman cannot be divine. WebFrederick Douglass speech What to a Slave is the Fourth of July effectively argues against slavery. You may rejoice. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. 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. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? Many of you understand them better than I do. WebCelebrating 200 years of Frederick Douglass. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. WebThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? I am not that man. Transcribe your audio files to find high-impact insights in minutes. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? In the summer of 2020, the U.S. commemorated Independence Day amid nationwide What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. One of the parts of the speech that resonates with me the most is when Douglass says: What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? You could instruct me in regard to them. Oppression makes a wise man mad. I cannot. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul! Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Juneteenth Reading List: 10 Books To Learn More About Black Independence Day, Your email will be shared with newsone.com and subject to its, 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, . Travel through South America. Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations Jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from his limbs? You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation Babylon, whose crimes towering up to heaven with thrown down by the breadth of the almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin. 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.. Your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless, your shouts of Liberty and equality, hallow mocked, your prayers and hymns your sermons and Thanksgivings with all your religious parade in solemnity are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, a thin veil to cover up crimes, which would disgrace a nation of savages. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. The manhood of the slave is conceded. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? Roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. 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! Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. 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. Oh! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. 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.. All Rights Reserved. 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. For it is not light that is needed, but fire. The manhood of the slave is conceded. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his body? I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? My soul sickens at the sight. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have Abraham to our father, when they had long lost Abrahams faith and spirit. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Frederick Douglass's, What To the Slave Is the Fourth of A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.. Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. That year will come, and freedoms reign. Nobody doubts it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Though a biting Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. 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, Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. What have I, or those I represent to do with your national independence. 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, in preference to the gospel,as preached by those Divines! This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, newspaper publisher, and respected abolitionist. Who can reason on such a proposition? Its the news, without the news. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! Fellow-citizens! The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and its crimes against God and man must be denounced. Make your content more accessible to people with disabilities. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. The propriety of the nation must be startled. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select. 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. 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. Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. I answer: a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. 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 must mourn. With them, nothing was settled that was not right. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? It was, Milloy continued, a critique of a nation that claimed to hold dear the principles of freedom, justice and equality even as it enslaved black people.. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nations history the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. I am not that man. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. But now is the time, the important time. Nobody doubts it. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. Many of its most eloquent Divines. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. 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. How unlike the politicians of an hour! By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. How should I look today, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. I repeat, I am glad this is so. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful? I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. This is a primary source reading analysis of Frederick Douglass' famous speech. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. We are called upon to prove that we are men. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. 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. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, who does not know that slavery is wrong for him. You were under the British Crown. Yet they persevered. Web" was a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery 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. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moments warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. But I fancy, I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression upon the public mind. Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? The time for such argument is past. 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. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. 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. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. 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.. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. Is slavery among them? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. The style and title of your sovereign people (in which you now glory) was not then born. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. President John F. Kennedy On July 4, 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered this speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. Its quite a remarkable speech as Douglass in a way reenacts his own journey in appreciation for the work that Lincoln did, not just for blacks, but for whites in this country. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) the internal slave trade. It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. WebFrederick Douglass, Fifth of July speech (1852) O! You live and must die, and you must do your work. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands.
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