Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. 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. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his body? They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. Its the news, without the news. Frederick Douglass: (02:57) To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. 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 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. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. 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? Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. 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. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. My soul sickens at the sight. 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 blasphemy in the thought. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, newspaper publisher, and respected abolitionist. What to the American slave is your 4th of July? WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. Morel is right that the 1876 speech by Frederick Douglass is remarkable and masterful. O! 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 Suicide Note Revealed After Shocking Death, Mississippi Cops Beat, Waterboarded Handcuffed Black Men, Shot 1 For Dating White Women': Lawyers, Indicted! And while slavery has long been abolished and outlawed, the sentiment behind the address still applies in many unfortunate ways when it comes to the overall Black experience in America. Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? Frederick Douglass: (03:37) While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! The drove moves tardily. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. 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. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. Standing here identified with the American bondsmen, making his wrongs mine. The propriety of the nation must be startled. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. 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. 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. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. I will show you a man-drover. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? 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. This is a primary source reading analysis of Frederick Douglass' famous speech. 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. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. 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 America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. Frederick Douglass: (02:13) Frederick Douglass: (07:35) They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. 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. Space is comparatively annihilated. 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! 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. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. 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 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? You have already declared it. 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. 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 These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians. 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 principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. My subject then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. Follow the drove to New Orleans. 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! 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. 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. Then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful? Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? 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. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. But I admit, where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued. 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. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. 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. He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers yourUnion. I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. You have already declared it. Your cause would be much more likely to succeed. Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is, today, in active operation in this boasted republic. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent Speech-to-Text live streaming for live captions, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition API. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. 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 This is esteemed by some as a national trait perhaps a national weakness. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. 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. welcome anything! Cling to this day cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. I will use the severest language I can command. I must mourn. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. 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, 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. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. That year will come, and freedoms reign. Oh! The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. They that can, may; I cannot. The questions are designed to provoke thought and guide the students through the document. 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. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. That point is conceded already. Transcript Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 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. What, 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 irons, 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?
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