Read its preamble, consider its purposes. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? The time for such argument is passed.At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Yea! He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. But its quite another to change the way you see yourself and to grow into a person deeply committed to long-term interracial coalition building. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. There is blasphemy in the thought. Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. These rules are well established. that it should be so; yet so it is. 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. What characteristics does he praise about them? The country can progress like it has before, transforming from being a colony of a far-away king to an independent nation. 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, a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.Fellow-citizens! What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? [12], According to the 1850 Census, there were around 3.2 million enslaved persons in the United States. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. . He expresses his belief in the speech that he and other slaves are fighting the same fight in terms of wishing to be free that White Americans, the ancestors of the white people he is addressing, fought seventy years earlier. According to Douglass, these inconsistencies have made the United States the object of mockery and often contempt among the various nations of the world. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. [20]:346 To prove evidence of these inconsistencies, as one historian noted, during the speech Douglass claims that the United States Constitution is an abolitionist document and not a pro-slavery document.[22][23][24]. He thinks they were extremely intelligent, and the thinks it is admirable that when they realized they were oppressed by Britain, they rebelled. What is now known as the "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 as an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. Rhetoricians R. L. Heath and D. Waymer refer to this as the "paradox of the positive" because it highlights how something positive and meant to be positive can also exclude individuals. dismay. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. 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: Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, on July 5th, 1852. [6] Due to this and the variant titles given to it in various places, and the fact that it is called a July Fourth Oration but was actually delivered on July 5, some confusion has arisen about the date and contents of the speech. Must we allow symbols of racism on public land? More than 150 years later, Keidrick Roy, a doctoral student in American Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a U.S. Air Force veteran, will host a virtual community reading and discussion of the storied speech at the Somerville Museum on Thursday as part of the annual state-wide MassHumanities program Reading Frederick Douglass Together.. The time was when such could be done. be warned! May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. In a Fourth of July holiday special, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. Were not only going to be reading books like White Fragility, and Divided by Faith, but were also going to read and watch a number of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., and documentaries like 13th and King in the Wilderness, as we try to get at the root of racial division so we can come together to remove it. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. we wept when we remembered Zion. The manhood of the slave is conceded. And it also imposed severe penalties on anyone who helped enslaved people to escape. It is not that pure and undefiled religion which is from above, and which is first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. At the same time, we need to be studying the history of slavery and racism in this country so we can build policies, practices, and procedures that address the present problems with those historical inequities in mind. 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?Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Oh! Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cuminabridge the fight 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 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. He can bring no witnesses for himself. 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. He wrote a glowing letter of encouragement to Harriet Tubman, which served as the preface to Sarah Bradfords 1869 biography about Tubmans life. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. [19]. Is it at the gateway? GAZETTE: This is your second year as host of Reading Frederick Douglass Together in Somerville. In a Fourth of July holiday special, we hear the words of Frederick Douglass. Keidrick Roy, the host of the virtual reading event. But the 1852 "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech remains the best known of his addresses on the occasion, especially as it became even more widely read in the late-20th century,. 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. The well-known speech was previously known as The Meaning of July the Fourth for the Negro. Later, the speech was re-titled based on Douglasss question, What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?. Is slavery among them? You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. 2003. 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. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. He talks about how Americans are proud of their country and their religion and how they rejoice in the name of freedom and liberty and yet they do not offer those things to millions of their country's residents. Is it at the gateway? In his speech, "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery . With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? we wept when we remembered Zion. Oppression makes a wise man mad. Douglass then discusses the internal slave trade in America. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. 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. Creative people have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly. They find common ground in Houghton Library exhibition. [9][10] He had previously lived in Boston, but did not want his newspaper to interfere with sales of The Liberator, published by William Lloyd Garrison. This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 19:31. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? 15 November's Documents in Detail webinar was about Frederick Douglass's What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, his oration delivered on 5 July 1862. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisya thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. ROY: Douglass wrote the speech in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which effectively extended the reach of slave power in the South throughout the rest of the country. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. PDF. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Who can reason on such a proposition? We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. One of the biggest challenges we face in our present moment is building sustainable movements that fundamentally change peoples minds about race and racism. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. [17] This act drew the ire of the abolitionist movement,[9] and was directly criticized by Douglass in his speech. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. He faults America for utter hypocrisy and betrayal of those values in maintaining the institution of slavery. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Douglass denounces the churches for betraying their own biblical and Christian values. 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. 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. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! 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, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. He had delivered a series of seven lectures about slavery there in the winter of 185051. Douglass also stresses the view that slaves and free Americans are equal in nature. 2. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. During the Civil War, Douglass said that since Massachusetts had been the first state to join the Patriot cause during the American Revolutionary War, black men should go to Massachusetts to enlist in the Union Army. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? 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. Without this fight, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. You know what is a swine-drover? He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating freedom. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. 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. It is neither. [16][17] Finally, the Act did not allow the accused individual of defending themselves in court. 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. What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he con signs to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. [13] Although the import of people directly from Africa had been banned in 1807,[14] the domestic slave trade, still legal, was thriving. The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft-interred with their bones. 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. He took action to raise the voices of others and to aid their work on the national stage, especially that of two Black women in the last half of the 19th century. Douglass, Frederick, ed. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. Space is comparatively annihilated. 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.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.In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. This truth is not a doubtful one. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. Nevertheless, Douglass claims that this can change. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. Ossie DavisA Voice Ringing O'er the Gale! For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Frederick Douglass sought not only to convince people of the wrongfulness of slavery but also to make abolition more acceptable to Northern whites. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christians God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? . weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! This act forced citizens to report people who had escaped their enslavement and escaped to a free state, under punishment of a fine or imprisonment. "[1][2] was a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. Table of Contents. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. A self-taught man, he escaped from slavery and eventually became a leader in the abolitionist movement. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? Douglass referred not only to the captivity of enslaved people, but to the merciless exploitation and the cruelty and torture that slaves were subjected to in the United States. Follow the drove to New Orleans. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more. Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass That point is conceded already. 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.I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.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. Yea! The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. or is it in the temple? 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 several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. He became a leader in the abolitionist movement, which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War. Frederick Douglass, a well-known Black writer, orator, and abolitionist was asked to address an anti-slavery group on the July 4 holiday in 1852. 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.Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. Repetition Parallel structure ethos pathos Analogy Simile/Metaphor Rhetorical Question logos Part 2 - Slavery in America Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called uponto speak here today? ROY: The event that were doing in Somerville puts pressure on whitewashed conceptions of the Fourth of July, as many people to this day still view it as a celebration of American food, fireworks, and freedom. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. 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. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. He is outraged by the lack of responsibility and indifference towards slavery that many sects have taken around the nation. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. ROY:One of the things that Douglass writings shows us is that he believed in amplifying a variety of voices. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming hand-bills, headed CASH FOR NEGROES. 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. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. The anti-slavery movement there was 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 or a hostile position towards that movement. 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. The occasion was the Society's Fourth of July celebration, but Douglass refused to give the speech on July 4; he would not celebrate the holiday so long as African Americans remained enslaved. [26] After the Civil War, Douglass said that "we" had achieved a great thing by gaining American independence during the American Revolutionary War, though he said it was not as great as what was achieved by the Civil War. your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery." Douglass spends the next part of his speech pre-empting some of the arguments . He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. 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. 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