Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Douglass gave this speech to a group of abolitionists 168 years ago. The manhood of the slave is conceded. 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. Speech-to-Text live streaming for live captions, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition API. 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! Frederick Douglass: (03:37) 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. Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is, today, in active operation in this boasted republic. At the time of the delivery of this speech, Douglass had been living in Rochester, New York for several years editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper. He was invited to give a fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. In the early 1850s, tensions over slavery were high across the county. All Rights Reserved. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. Nobody doubts it. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. 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. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. Douglass views the monument and the day's ceremonies as reflecting honor upon African That, which is inhuman cannot be divine. 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. 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. WebThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. The din of business, too, is hushed. You have already declared it. Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. Speech Transcript 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 Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. 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. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. The propriety of the nation must be startled. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped. You have already declared it. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. What, then, remains to be argued? An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! What have I, or those I represent to do with your national independence. Is slavery among them? What to the Slave is the 4th of July? Speech Transcript by Frederick Douglass, Congressional Testimony & Hearing Transcripts. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. But now is the time, the important time. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. The time was when such could be done. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. 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. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. 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 need the storm. 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. Roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world. The manhood of the slave is conceded. 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. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not that man. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. President John F. Kennedy On July 4, 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered this speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. be warned! It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. I think that, in whatever else I may be deficient, I have Is a matter, the set with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. 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. 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. And the conscience of the nation must be roused. I have detained my audience entirely too long already. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul! WebFrederick Douglass speech What to a Slave is the Fourth of July effectively argues against slavery. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. Extend your content reach and maximize your engagement rates. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? The drove moves tardily. 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. You may rejoice. O! I was born amid such sights and scenes. Transcript Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. 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. 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? Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground formen. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.. 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. You know what is a swine-drover? The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. Suicide Note Revealed After Shocking Death, Mississippi Cops Beat, Waterboarded Handcuffed Black Men, Shot 1 For Dating White Women': Lawyers, Indicted! In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! 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. 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. They were great in their day and generation. 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, Follow the drove to New Orleans. 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 a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.. 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. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! Yet they persevered. 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? 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. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. The questions are designed to provoke thought and guide the students through the document. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. This 4th of July is yours, not mine. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. be warned! 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. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most sacrilegious and shocking and would make me a reproach before God and the world. 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? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. There is blasphemy in the thought. 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. Convert your audio or video into 99% accurate text by a professional. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. Cling to this day cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. that it should be so; yet so it is. or is it in the temple? The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and its crimes against God and man must be denounced. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. I must mourn. Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. we wept when we remembered Zion. 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. But, to proceed. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. We are called upon to prove that we are men. Nobody doubts it. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. I will use the severest language I can command. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. had I the ability, and could I reach the nations ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. What then remains to be argued? That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. Go search where you will. I repeat, I am glad this is so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! Is that a question for Republicans? In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. 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. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion. Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. Youmay rejoice,Imust mourn. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. 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! 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. 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. There is blasphemy in the thought. Thu 5 Jul 2018 07.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 24 Jul 2019 11.58 EDT. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. 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. Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. Difference between Rittenhouse and McMichael-Bryan verdicts? Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? in 1852, drawing parallels between the Revolutionary War and the fight to abolish slavery. 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. 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. They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. Many of its most eloquent Divines. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Yea! 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 Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. I will show you a man-drover. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. The document is in the form of a Google Docs so it has a translation tool, dictionary, and voice to text. 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. I will not excuse. 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. That point is conceded already. 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. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.. This Fourth [of] July isyours, notmine. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. 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. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. You live and must die, and you must do your work. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. 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. 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 ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. 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. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation Babylon, whose crimes towering up to heaven with thrown down by the breadth of the almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin. Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. 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! Born to an enslaved family in 1818, Frederick Douglass never knew his actual birthday, a fact not uncommon for those enslaved. 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. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his body? 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.. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! With them, nothing was settled that was not right. Calculate how much it costs to transcribe, caption, or subtitle your content. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. The country was poor in the munitions of war. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. He can bring no witnesses for himself. Try Rev and save time transcribing, captioning, and subtitling. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slaves redemption from his chains. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. Fellow-citizens! The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.
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