But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The manhood of the slave is conceded. And am I therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national alter and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? I cannot. 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. 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. 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. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. You were under the British Crown. Many of its most eloquent Divines. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? 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. 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. 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, . 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 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. Is a matter, the set with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? 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! We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. President John F. Kennedy On July 4, 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered this speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This, however, did not answer the purpose. 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! Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. 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. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper. The time for such argument is past. Frederick Douglass: (07:35) 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. 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. Frederick Douglass: (03:37) Yet they persevered. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. I must mourn. 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. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. 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. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, 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! Americans! Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. 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. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Who can reason on such a proposition? What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! You have no right to enjoy a childs share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. What to the American slave is your 4th of July? welcome atheism! Its the news, without the news. Transcripts & captions for a better media workflow. We are called upon to prove that we are men. 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. Calculate how much it costs to transcribe, caption, or subtitle your content. Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. Like our content? 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! 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. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Is that a question for Republicans? There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. WebA speech celebrating both Lincoln and African Americans freedom wrought by Lincoln. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. No, I will not. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. A RESTful API to access Revs workforce of fast, high quality transcriptionists and captioners. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. 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. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. You may rejoice. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. That year will come, and freedoms reign. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. 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. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. At a time like this, scorching irony not convincing argument is needed. The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. 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 Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. All Rights Reserved. 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 Build with the best speech-to-text APIs around. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. Frederick Douglass: (00:26) No! The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. 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. Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) 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. 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. 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?