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. Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 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. Americans! My subject then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? And the lame man leap as an heart, but such is not the case. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Oh! Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interest a nations jubilee. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. The text of Frederick Douglasss most famous speech, given in 1852, What, to a slave, is the Fourth of July? A chapter describing Douglasss early encounters with abolitionists, from his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, 1857. What to the American slave is your 4th of July? VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Is it not astonishing that while we are plowing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metal of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold, that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers that we are engaged in all the enterprises, common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planting, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all confessing and worshiping the Christian God and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. Transcript Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 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, Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. 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. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. But, such is not the state of the case. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. The propriety of the nation must be startled. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. Translated on-screen subtitles for videos. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of. Who can reason on such a proposition? 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. 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. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. Make your content more accessible to people with disabilities. 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. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. 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 will show you a man-drover. You may well cherish the memory of such men. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear butoneside; andthatside, is the side of the oppressor. I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers yourUnion. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. The manhood of the slave is conceded. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow., The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. 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. They were great in their day and generation. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) 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. WebThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. He can bring no witnesses for himself. 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, speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 as an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. Before you read the speech you can follow these links to learn more about Douglasss life and the evolution of his thought in this period. Short bio of Frederick Douglass The Frederick Douglass Papers Library of Congress I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! What? 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 doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. Oppression makes a wise man mad. Many of you understand them better than I do. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. in preference to the gospel,as preached by those Divines! WebIn this speech, Frederick Douglass reflected on how the outpouring of joy at the conclusion of the Civil War turned to mourning with Lincolns assassination. I will not. 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.. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! 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. 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. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Become a freelancer and work on your own terms. I must mourn. Like our content? They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! 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. Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slaves point of view. that it should be so; yet so it is. You were under the British Crown. 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. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. 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. Its the news, without the news. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. What have I, or those I represent to do with your national independence. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. Build with the best speech-to-text APIs around. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. 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. 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! Frederick Douglass: (06:03) 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. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? 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. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age. For 186 years this doctrine of national independence has shaken the globeand it remains the most powerful force anywhere in the world today. Towards the end of 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. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an Independence Day celebration organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. 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! Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. The manhood of the slave is conceded. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. 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! 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. will be found by Americans. 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. 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. It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. 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 or to write. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray.