The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. I think that, in whatever else I may be deficient, I have See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. O! But, such is not the state of the case. 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 Build with the best speech-to-text APIs around. Transcripts & captions for a better media workflow. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. 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. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. 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. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. 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. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent African-American professional men in celebration of the twenty-first anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.After the toast provided by former Senator Blanche K. Bruce, What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. That point is conceded already. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.
Speech 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 I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. The style and title of your sovereign people (in which you now glory) was not then born. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. At a time like this, scorching irony not convincing argument is needed. WATCH VIDEO: Should Black Americans Celebrate Independence Day? It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. What to the Slave is the 4th of July? Speech Transcript by Frederick Douglass, Congressional Testimony & Hearing Transcripts. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. 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. WebFrederick Douglass, Fifth of July speech (1852) O! 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. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and toallrights in this republic, the rights of God included! What, then, remains to be argued? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation? A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. be warned! Many of you understand them better than I do. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. The time was when such could be done. The slave holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. Mark them! The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.
They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age. 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. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. 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. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. 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. By that act, Mason and Dixons line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. Frederick Douglass: (01:08) But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. 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.
Frederick Douglass speech - PBS You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. To him, your celebration is a sham, your boasted Liberty, an unholy license, your national greatness, swelling vanity. I will not equivocate. We need the storm. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble.
Speech And while slavery has long been abolished and outlawed, the sentiment behind the address still applies in many unfortunate ways when it comes to the overall Black experience in America. I am not that man. 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. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! 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. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. 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? 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 language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. They were not the men to look back. Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Frederick Douglass's, What To the Slave Is the Fourth of 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. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God.
Oration by Frederick Douglass, delivered on the occasion of the that it should be so; yet so it is. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. 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 hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The country was poor in the munitions of war. No! America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. I will show you a man-drover. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! These rules are well established. There is blasphemy in the thought. Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. 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.
speech There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. WebFrederick Douglass speech What to a Slave is the Fourth of July effectively argues against slavery.
A Nation's Story: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? You were under the British Crown.
Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth 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. Discover why Rev is the #1 speech-to-text service in the world. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. The text of Frederick Douglasss most famous speech, given in 1852, What, to a slave, is the Fourth of July? A chapter describing Douglasss early encounters with abolitionists, from his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, 1857. 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. 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 I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. 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 not that man. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.
VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' Fellow-citizens! Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped. What was possible for him, he sincerely believed was possible for any man who was willing to work hard. WebOn December 3, 1860, Frederick Douglass and a group of fellow abolitionists met at the Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston for a discussion centered around the following By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. What? For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. 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. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day.