Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped. That, which is inhuman cannot be divine. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! 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. Easily integrate Rev using our robust APIs to start building your product quickly. He can bring no witnesses for himself. WebThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. I must mourn. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, thenwill I argue with you that the slave is a man! 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? On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an Independence Day celebration organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. The questions are designed to provoke thought and guide the students through the document. They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? They inhabit all our Southern States. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. Morel is right that the 1876 speech by Frederick Douglass is remarkable and masterful. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, andthugs. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slaves point of view. Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is, today, in active operation in this boasted republic. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! President John F. Kennedy On July 4, 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered this speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. What, then, remains to be argued? Translated on-screen subtitles for videos. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. 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. WebA speech celebrating both Lincoln and African Americans freedom wrought by Lincoln. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! 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. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. That point is conceded already. During Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. 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. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? 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. Follow the drove to New Orleans. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. 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. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout We have Washington toour father. Alas! 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. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. 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. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) the internal slave trade. It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Racist Ex-University Of Kentucky 'Karen' Sophia Rosing Is Charged For Assaulting Black Student. 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. That he is the rightful owner of his own body? 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. 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. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. Frederick Douglass: (02:57) They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. Would you argue more and denounce less? 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. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear butoneside; andthatside, is the side of the oppressor. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. When the dogs in your street, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea and the reptiles that crawl shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. WATCH VIDEO: Should Black Americans Celebrate Independence Day? 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! My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ, is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? 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. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. For who is there so cold that a nation sympathy cannot warm him, who so adore it and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. WebDescription. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. 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 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. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? 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. WebCelebrating 200 years of Frederick Douglass. You know what is a swine-drover? Make your content more accessible to people with disabilities. At a time like this, scorching irony not convincing argument is needed. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. I will not. 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.. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. My soul sickens at the sight. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. The most accurate AI-powered transcription on the market. You may well cherish the memory of such men. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. Douglass views the monument and the day's ceremonies as reflecting honor upon African Go search where you will. This, however, did not answer the purpose. Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. 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. WebIn the late 1860sat a moment of great hope for the promise of equality under the lawthe famed orator and once-enslaved abolitionist Frederick Douglass took his Our Composite Nation speech on the road to argue for a plural American democracy. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. Who can reason on such a proposition? whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! 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. But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic. This Fourth [of] July isyours, notmine. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. What? 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? I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. 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. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. 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. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world.