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 in sacrilegious irony. Standing here identified with the American bondsmen, making his wrongs mine. 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. Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God. In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it: Th oppressd shall vilely bend the knee. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. The slave holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. 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. 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. The style and title of your sovereign people (in which you now glory) was not then born. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. I am not included within the pales of this glorious anniversary. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? Full transcript of the famous speech What to the Slave is the 4th of July? by Frederick Douglass. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. You know what is a swine-drover? 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. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. They, that can, may. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. 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. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! Frederick Douglass: (04:09) When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. His death, according to Douglass was not only tragic, but also prevented recently freed slaves and African Americans from gaining the ear of wise and well-intentioned leader. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! The manhood of the slave is conceded. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. Fromwhat quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? 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. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. We need the storm. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. You could instruct me in regard to them. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! I repeat, I am glad this is so. 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. Become a freelancer and work on your own terms. At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. 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! For it is not light that is needed, but fire. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic. 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. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. 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 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. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. 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. 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 Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. will be found by Americans. Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. 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? WebDescription. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? 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. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation? They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully 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! To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. Its deeply moving to hear Douglass defend the honor of Black soldiers in his 1863 speech, The Proclamation And a Negro Army, read by Colman Domingo, while his final speech, 1894s Lessons of the Hour, lays out the crucial steps toward achieving equality that have yet to be followed today.The actor selected to read these words is This is esteemed by some as a national trait perhaps a national weakness. 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. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! What then remains to be argued? They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age. 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. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. 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. Like our content? What have I, or those I represent to do with your national independence. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Born to an enslaved family in 1818, Frederick Douglass never knew his actual birthday, a fact not uncommon for those enslaved. These rules are well established. 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.. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. Make your content more accessible to people with disabilities. Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to Rob them of their Liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with ions, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? 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. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground formen. Frederick Douglass: (07:35) But I admit, where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who be warned! This 4th of July is yours, not mine. Cling to this day cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. Suicide Note Revealed After Shocking Death, Mississippi Cops Beat, Waterboarded Handcuffed Black Men, Shot 1 For Dating White Women': Lawyers, Indicted! I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. 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. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. 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. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? The Fugitive SlaveLawmakes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. 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. 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 Best Speech-to-Text Solution for Your Business Learn how Rev fits into your businesses workflow. 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, The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. The time for such argument is passed. Calculate how much it costs to transcribe, caption, or subtitle your content. As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. 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. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Who can reason on such a proposition? 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. This is a primary source reading analysis of Frederick Douglass' famous speech. And am I therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national alter and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? Frederick Douglass's, What To the Slave Is the Fourth of This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. 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. I think that, in whatever else I may be deficient, I have You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. 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. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. But, such is not the state of the case. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. But now is the time, the important time. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. 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. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! Space is comparatively annihilated. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? 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. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. The time was when such could be done. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Mark them! 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. Under Title 17 U.S.C. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! Many of its most eloquent Divines. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. 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. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. Douglass views the monument and the day's ceremonies as reflecting honor upon African Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, iswrong? And the conscience of the nation must be roused. For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. WebA speech celebrating both Lincoln and African Americans freedom wrought by Lincoln. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. The time for such argument is past. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. Travel through South America. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. 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. On July 5, 1852, eminent African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered a brilliant speech to nearly six hundred people filling Rochester, New Yorks Corinthian Hall, as organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. 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.. 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.