That point is conceded already. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. Is slavery among them? And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. Juneteenth Reading List: 10 Books To Learn More About Black Independence Day, Your email will be shared with newsone.com and subject to its, 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, . To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. And the conscience of the nation must be roused. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, andthugs. 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. 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. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. I lived on Philpot Street, Fells Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. 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. 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. WebThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. I repeat, I am glad this is so. 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. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. Extend your content reach and maximize your engagement rates. How should I look today in the presence of Americans dividing and subdividing, a discourse to show that men have a natural right to freedom speaking of it, relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What was possible for him, he sincerely believed was possible for any man who was willing to work hard. WebAn excerpt from the 1847 Frederick Douglass speech given for the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 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. Web"The Lessons of the Hour" Speech by Frederick Douglass, January 9, 1894 Friends and Fellow Citizens : No man should come before an audience like the one by whose presence I am now honored, without a noble object and a fixed and earnest purpose. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! 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. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? 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. Travel through South America. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. The Fugitive SlaveLawmakes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. This 4th of July is yours, not mine. 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.. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression. 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. 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.. 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. Make your content more accessible to people with disabilities. By that act, Mason and Dixons line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. 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, The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. 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! 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. WebFrederick Douglass, Fifth of July speech (1852) O! Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. The Best Speech-to-Text Solution for Your Business Learn how Rev fits into your businesses workflow. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpablebribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a mans liberty,hear only his accusers! They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. 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. That year will come, and freedoms reign. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. Suicide Note Revealed After Shocking Death, Mississippi Cops Beat, Waterboarded Handcuffed Black Men, Shot 1 For Dating White Women': Lawyers, Indicted! This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. With them, nothing was settled that was not right. I cannot. But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic. WebA speech celebrating both Lincoln and African Americans freedom wrought by Lincoln. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. This is a primary source reading analysis of Frederick Douglass' famous speech. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. All Rights Reserved. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? They were not the men to look back. I answer: a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. My subject then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. 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. Translated on-screen subtitles for videos. The time was when such could be done. How unlike the politicians of an hour! It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers yourUnion. Would you persuade more and rebuke less? 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. Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. or is it in the temple? Frederick Douglass: (05:02) VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. 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. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.