It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. 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! Would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his body? Transcript Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? For it is not light that is needed, but fire. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. 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. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Frederick Douglass delivered 'best Fourth of July speech in 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! Your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless, your shouts of Liberty and equality, hallow mocked, your prayers and hymns your sermons and Thanksgivings with all your religious parade in solemnity are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, a thin veil to cover up crimes, which would disgrace a nation of savages. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an Independence Day celebration organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. WebOn January 9, 1894, at Washington, D.C.'s, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, Frederick Douglass delivered his "The Lessons of the Hour" speech, which addressed the Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! I shall not be charged with slandering Americans, if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands. What? Is slavery among them? With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression. 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! You have already declared it. Speech In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. 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. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States. I will use the severest language I can command. What have I, or those I represent to do with your national independence. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slaves point of view. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation Babylon, whose crimes towering up to heaven with thrown down by the breadth of the almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin. 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. What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? - Wikipedia welcome anything! 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. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. I am not that man. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. 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. VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' 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. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. Frederick Douglass But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment. For 186 years this doctrine of national independence has shaken the globeand it remains the most powerful force anywhere in the world today. 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. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. 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: Th oppressd shall vilely bend the knee. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. You were under the British Crown. WebFrederick Douglass speech What to a Slave is the Fourth of July effectively argues against slavery. We need the storm. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have Abraham to our father, when they had long lost Abrahams faith and spirit. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.. 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. Frederick Douglass: (07:35) 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. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. The Best Speech-to-Text Solution for Your Business Learn how Rev fits into your businesses workflow. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? They were great in their day and generation. 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! 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. Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? Is it at the gateway? 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. That year will come, and freedoms reign. WebCelebrating 200 years of Frederick Douglass. His own testimony is nothing. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. 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? Section 107, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet. 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. Speech Transcript They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. Oration by Frederick Douglass, delivered on the occasion of the 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. 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. 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. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. 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. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground formen. You may well cherish the memory of such men. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. Follow the drove to New Orleans. WebFrederick Douglass, Fifth of July speech (1852) O! These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. 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! To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. 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. It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. 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. Frederick Douglass Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? 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. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? 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. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. Is that a question for Republicans? Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. Frederick Douglass: (08:30) There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. 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 Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. 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. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Frederick Douglass I cannot. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. 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 Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. How unlike the politicians of an hour! As with rivers so with nations. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. 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. We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; buthow, we ask, could such a thing be done? a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nations bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic;for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, andlet the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever! You live and must die, and you must do your work. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. Frederick Douglass: (05:02) The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Is it not astonishing that while we are plowing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metal of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold, that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers that we are engaged in all the enterprises, common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planting, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all confessing and worshiping the Christian God and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave. Frederick Douglass July Fourth Speech Full Text: Read For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Discover why Rev is the #1 speech-to-text service in the world. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. They that can, may; I cannot. My soul sickens at the sight. 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. Community Reading: Frederick Douglass's "What 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. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Mark them! During Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. I must mourn. 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. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. 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. 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. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. 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. Speech-to-Text API for pre-recorded audio, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition engine. 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. 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.. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! What, to the American Slave, Is Your The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. And the lame man leap as an heart, but such is not the case. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. speech 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. Yea! Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. Racist Ex-University Of Kentucky 'Karen' Sophia Rosing Is Charged For Assaulting Black Student. VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. Suicide Note Revealed After Shocking Death, Mississippi Cops Beat, Waterboarded Handcuffed Black Men, Shot 1 For Dating White Women': Lawyers, Indicted! A Nation's Story: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? 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 have already declared it. 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? Douglass gave this speech to a group of abolitionists 168 years ago. The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. 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. I repeat, I am glad this is so. 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. You may rejoice, I must mourn.. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth! To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? 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 hypocrisy a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the meretoolsand body-guardsof the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. 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. 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. I answer: a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. All Rights Reserved. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. Space is comparatively annihilated. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. 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. They, that can, may. For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! 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.

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