They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. That year will come, and freedoms reign. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. 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 Is that a question for Republicans? They, that can, may. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. The manhood of the slave is conceded. Frederick Douglass: (00:26) Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will in the name of humanity, which is outraged in the name of Liberty, which is fettered in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon dare to call and question and to denounce with all the emphasis I can command everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. My soul sickens at the sight. 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. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. To him, your celebration is a sham, your boasted Liberty, an unholy license, your national greatness, swelling vanity. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Frederick Douglass: (08:30) Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. 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. WebIn December 1860, the great American orator and former slave Frederick Douglass delivered one of his finest speeches, A Plea for Free Speech in Boston. In it, he boldly declared that liberty is meaningless where the right to utter ones thoughts and You profess to believe that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth, and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. 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? 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. Easily integrate Rev using our robust APIs to start building your product quickly. 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. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear butoneside; andthatside, is the side of the oppressor. WebA speech celebrating both Lincoln and African Americans freedom wrought by Lincoln. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slaves redemption from his chains. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. Racist Ex-University Of Kentucky 'Karen' Sophia Rosing Is Charged For Assaulting Black Student. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. You were under the British Crown. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. 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. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? But I admit, where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued. Thu 5 Jul 2018 07.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 24 Jul 2019 11.58 EDT. welcome atheism! Douglass views the monument and the day's ceremonies as reflecting honor upon African I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. The style and title of your sovereign people (in which you now glory) was not then born. The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and its crimes against God and man must be denounced. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations Jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from his limbs? 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! We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. 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. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. 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. Calculate how much it costs to transcribe, caption, or subtitle your content. Frederick Douglass: (06:03) What then remains to be argued? Born to an enslaved family in 1818, Frederick Douglass never knew his actual birthday, a fact not uncommon for those enslaved. 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 population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. 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. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, Transcribe your audio files to find high-impact insights in minutes. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Who can reason on such a proposition? My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. Oh! Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. 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. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. For 186 years this doctrine of national independence has shaken the globeand it remains the most powerful force anywhere in the world today. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. The Best Speech-to-Text Solution for Your Business Learn how Rev fits into your businesses workflow. Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is, today, in active operation in this boasted republic. 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). 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. Mark them! will be found by Americans. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. 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. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. 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. WebDescription. Cling to this day cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. 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 cannot. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! 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! They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. 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. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Speech-to-Text API for pre-recorded audio, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition engine. Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cumin abridge the right 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. What have I, or those I represent to do with your national independence. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. Transcripts & captions for a better media workflow. This truth is not a doubtful one. Frederick Douglass: (09:38) I will not. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Where these are, man is not sacred. What, then, remains to be argued? 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. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. 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. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. The most accurate AI-powered transcription on the market. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. Fair use is permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will use the severest language I can command; 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. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. 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. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. But I fancy, I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression upon the public mind. 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. 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. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. 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. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? Fromwhat quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? WebBoth anniversaries remind us that the fight for independence and equality did not end in the 18th century - a theme highlighted in Douglass speech. But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. The document is in the form of a Google Docs so it has a translation tool, dictionary, and voice to text. 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. 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. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. 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. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Go search where you will. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? In the summer of 2020, the U.S. commemorated Independence Day amid nationwide Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? 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! Extend your content reach and maximize your engagement rates. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment. Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. Though a biting We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. 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. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. 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.