Frederick Douglass: (06:03) 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. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. I will not excuse. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? I have detained my audience entirely too long already. But, such is not the state of the case. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. 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. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. 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, . In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. 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. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? Youmay rejoice,Imust mourn. 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 or to write. 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. 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. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! During Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. 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. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? I was born amid such sights and scenes. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. be warned! 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. speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. WebCelebrating 200 years of Frederick Douglass. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.. Douglass gave this speech to a group of abolitionists 168 years ago. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? 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. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. Go search where you will. I must mourn. Fellow-citizens! There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? This 4th of July is yours, not mine. It is not that pure and undefiled religion which is from above, and which is first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits,without partiality, and without hypocrisy. But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains,stay there; and to the oppressor,oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. 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. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. 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. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. What to the Slave is the 4th of July? Speech Transcript by Frederick Douglass, Congressional Testimony & Hearing Transcripts. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. 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. Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. 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. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. And the conscience of the nation must be roused. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. Transcribe your audio files to find high-impact insights in minutes. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) 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. And the lame man leap as an heart, but such is not the case. The most accurate AI-powered transcription on the market. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Thu 5 Jul 2018 07.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 24 Jul 2019 11.58 EDT. 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. With them, nothing was settled that was not right. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! Mark them! The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? 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. Is a matter, the set with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? As with rivers so with nations. 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. The text of Frederick Douglasss most famous speech, given in 1852, What, to a slave, is the Fourth of July? A chapter describing Douglasss early encounters with abolitionists, from his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, 1857. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and toallrights in this republic, the rights of God included! WebDescription. Though a biting Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. WebAn excerpt from the 1847 Frederick Douglass speech given for the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 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. WebOn January 9, 1894, at Washington, D.C.'s, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, Frederick Douglass delivered his "The Lessons of the Hour" speech, which addressed the May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. This is a primary source reading analysis of Frederick Douglass' famous speech. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions. welcome anything! The country was poor in the munitions of war. You were under the British Crown. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! 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. Frederick Douglass: (09:38) 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. Towards the end of I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Become a freelancer and work on your own terms. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the meretoolsand body-guardsof the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. 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.

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