But, to proceed. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. 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? It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. 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! My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I will use the severest language I can command. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) 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. 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. Though a biting 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. I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine! How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? 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. 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. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. 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. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! 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? Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed. The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and its crimes against God and man must be denounced. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. 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. This truth is not a doubtful one. No, I will not. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. WebIn the late 1860sat a moment of great hope for the promise of equality under the lawthe famed orator and once-enslaved abolitionist Frederick Douglass took his Our Composite Nation speech on the road to argue for a plural American democracy. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. 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. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. 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, 1852, he was issuing a scathing indictment of American hypocrisy, Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy reminded readers. 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! I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. My soul sickens at the sight. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. For who is there so cold that a nation sympathy cannot warm him, who so adore it and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? You were under the British Crown. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. 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. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. 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. 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. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. This 4th of July is yours, not mine. 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 in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery the great sin and shame of America! Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. That he is the rightful owner of his own body? I am not that man. Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. WebThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. 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. They were not the men to look back. 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. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. Easily integrate Rev using our robust APIs to start building your product quickly. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. 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. Where these are, man is not sacred. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. Industry-leading accurate legal transcription to ensure you dont miss a statement. His own testimony is nothing. But, such is not the state of the case. 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 a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852 . The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christians God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!