Would you argue more and denounce less? It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. This 4th of July is yours, not mine. He can bring no witnesses for himself. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. Thu 5 Jul 2018 07.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 24 Jul 2019 11.58 EDT. 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. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. 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. Is that a question for Republicans? 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. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Frederick Douglass's, What To the Slave Is the Fourth of Frederick Douglass: (09:38) 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. He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. be warned! Community Reading: Frederick Douglass's "What Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose, aseventh partof the inhabitants of your country. Section 107, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. 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. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. Your cause would be much more likely to succeed. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear butoneside; andthatside, is the side of the oppressor. I must mourn. I cannot. 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! 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. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. 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. What, then, remains to be argued? 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. Where these are, man is not sacred. 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. 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. 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! 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. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? 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. Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man Speech | The Art of Manliness There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? You profess to believe that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth, and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. 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. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. No! For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, andthugs. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. The questions are designed to provoke thought and guide the students through the document. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. This Fourth [of] July isyours, notmine. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. 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, They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. Cling to this day cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. These rules are well established. Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. It is neither. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" Speech Transcript They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. The document is in the form of a Google Docs so it has a translation tool, dictionary, and voice to text. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, Like our content? I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpablebribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a mans liberty,hear only his accusers! Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth will be found by Americans. 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? Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! 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. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. WebThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. Speech-to-Text live streaming for live captions, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition API. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. Is slavery among them? 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. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent Speech Frederick Douglass When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans.
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