The din of business, too, is hushed. It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable. Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. Frederick Douglass: (02:13) Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. Frederick Douglass 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. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. 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. My soul sickens at the sight. The anti-slavery movementtherewas not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement. WebFrederick Douglass speech Historical Document "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" 1852 Resource Bank Contents Click here for the text of this historical document. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent Frederick Douglass: (04:09) Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. 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. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. 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. 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. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. 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. 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. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? 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. weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! 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. and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. 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. We thank you for taking the time to watch this community reading of Frederick Douglasss What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Source: Blight, David. These rules are well established. Frederick Douglass' Descendants Read His Famous 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. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. They were not the men to look back. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. One of the parts of the speech that resonates with me the most is when Douglass says: What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who Its the news, without the news. Speech In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? Is that a question for Republicans? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? They inhabit all our Southern States. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? WebOn January 9, 1894, at Washington, D.C.'s, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, Frederick Douglass delivered his "The Lessons of the Hour" speech, which addressed the It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. 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. America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! Many of its most eloquent Divines. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The propriety of the nation must be startled. You may rejoice, I must mourn.. 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. Speech For 186 years this doctrine of national independence has shaken the globeand it remains the most powerful force anywhere in the world today. 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.. The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. 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. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. 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? 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. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. Standing here identified with the American bondsmen, making his wrongs mine. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. 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. 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. 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. Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. 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. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. 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. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, iswrong? In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. 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. 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. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. 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. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Frederick Douglass: (06:03) But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. You know what is a swine-drover? We need the storm. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation? What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Space is comparatively annihilated. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. 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.. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. 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. 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. 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.. The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. 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. They, that can, may. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! 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. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. 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 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 may rejoice. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and toallrights in this republic, the rights of God included! At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. 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. I think that, in whatever else I may be deficient, I have An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. Community Reading: Frederick Douglass's "What 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. Transcript Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. 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. Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. I will show you a man-drover. What to the American slave is your 4th of July? They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. Is it at the gateway? They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. 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. 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. Frederick Douglass delivered 'best Fourth of July speech in I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. 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: (09:38) we wept when we remembered Zion. I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. Section 107, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. 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? There is blasphemy in the thought. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? 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. My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Travel through South America. there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. And yet not one word shall escape me that any man whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice or who is not at heart, a slaveholder shall not confess to be right and just. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. That he is the rightful owner of his own body? The most accurate AI-powered transcription on the market. 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. The country was poor in the munitions of war. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. Would you argue more and denounce less? That, which is inhuman cannot be divine. They that can, may; I cannot. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. In the text it states, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave- we are called upon to prove that we are men? (Douglas 763). Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. I was born amid such sights and scenes. Oh! It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! 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. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. 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. "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. 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. But, to proceed. This, however, did not answer the purpose. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Frederick Douglass speech - PBS These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. A Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1860) | Constitution Center If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. 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

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