Suicide Note Revealed After Shocking Death, Mississippi Cops Beat, Waterboarded Handcuffed Black Men, Shot 1 For Dating White Women': Lawyers, Indicted! 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. 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. It is neither. 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. What to the American slave is your 4th of July? They were not the men to look back. 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. My soul sickens at the sight. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. The manhood of the slave is conceded. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. 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 Fourth [of] July isyours, notmine. Where these are, man is not sacred. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. WebOn July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Douglass was a powerful Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout We have Washington toour father. Alas! They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Would you argue more and denounce less? I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. 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. You may rejoice, I must mourn.. Go search where you will. That year will come, and freedoms reign. 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. 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. When the dogs in your street, 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, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man. 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. Make your content more accessible to people with disabilities. Is that a question for Republicans? You have no right to enjoy a childs share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. What was possible for him, he sincerely believed was possible for any man who was willing to work hard. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. Calculate how much it costs to transcribe, caption, or subtitle your content. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.. But, such is not the state of the case. During 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. I will not excuse. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. Is that a question for Republicans? America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Yea! For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Oh! If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. Industry-leading accurate legal transcription to ensure you dont miss a statement. Its quite a remarkable speech as Douglass in a way reenacts his own journey in appreciation for the work that Lincoln did, not just for blacks, but for whites in this country. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. Convert your audio or video into 99% accurate text by a professional. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Who can reason on such a proposition? The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? I will use the severest language I can command. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. 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. Frederick Douglass: (09:38) 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! 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. 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. Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. The propriety of the nation must be startled. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. 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? Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have Abraham to our father, when they had long lost Abrahams faith and spirit. You know what is a swine-drover? Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. As with rivers so with nations. Racist Ex-University Of Kentucky 'Karen' Sophia Rosing Is Charged For Assaulting Black Student. 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! Speech Transcript We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. And the lame man leap as an heart, but such is not the case. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) I am not that man. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. 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.. 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. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. Mark them! 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! My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. For 186 years this doctrine of national independence has shaken the globeand it remains the most powerful force anywhere in the world today. I am not included within the pales of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. What then remains to be argued? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. 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 and sacrilegious irony. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. or is it in the temple? 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. Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. The manhood of the slave is conceded. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an Independence Day celebration organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. There are 72 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 these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. 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? Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions. The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it.