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. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. There is blasphemy in the thought. 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. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world. The questions are designed to provoke thought and guide the students through the document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. 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! The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority ofHimby whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example or the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teachthat we ought to obey mans law before the law of God. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. 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. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) 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? 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 With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you. 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. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. 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. 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. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. For it is not light that is needed, but fire. 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. 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. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent Frederick Douglass: (00:26) They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. WebCelebrating 200 years of Frederick Douglass. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. 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. VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. They were great in their day and generation. The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. 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. be warned! The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground formen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! 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. You live and must die, and you must do your work. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. From police shootings to the wage gap to crippling stereotypes (and everything in between), there are too many parallels today with what Douglass described in his speech to white America, including this relevant line. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. That year will come, and freedoms reign. I will show you a man-drover. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. President John F. Kennedy On July 4, 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered this speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. That point is conceded already. 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. This, however, did not answer the purpose. 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. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. 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, . That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. I repeat, I am glad this is so. Become a freelancer and work on your own terms. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. 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. 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. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. Fellow-citizens! To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. 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. 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? Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is, today, in active operation in this boasted republic. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. 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. 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. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. In a very telling sign, the fateful words of Frederick Douglass from a speech he delivered 170 years ago still resonate very much in 2022 as Black people in America continue the fight for the same kind of equality that the legendary abolitionist was demanding back in the mid-19th century. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers yourUnion. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. They, that can, may. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. 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. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. Douglass views the monument and the day's ceremonies as reflecting honor upon African 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. 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. 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. WATCH VIDEO: Should Black Americans Celebrate Independence Day? your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent.