Is it at the gateway? ARI . 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 in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slaverythe great sin and shame of America! 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. You live and must die, and you must do your work. . On July 5, 1852, in . had I the ability, and could I reach the nations ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. Douglass believed that slavery could be eliminated with the support of the church, and also with the reexamination of what the Bible was actually saying. 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. 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. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. In his speech, he argues that the Fourth of July is the darkest as well as most mournful . They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. 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 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.Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. 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 hypocrisya thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. This year is pretty challenging in the wake of COVID-19, and the event is going to be held online instead of before a live audience like we did last year. ROY: The better we get to know the people that we live with, that we work around, that we see at the coffee shop, and the more we talk about these important racial issues with one another, the easier it will be to heal our divided communities. He praises them because they were great men. 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. He is outraged by the lack of responsibility and indifference towards slavery that many sects have taken around the nation. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! we wept when we remembered Zion. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.Fellow-citizens! One small step toward understanding gravity, Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Without this fight, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. 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? 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. 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.Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? [7], The Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1851. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. 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. How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? Students also viewed "[1][2] was a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. ROY: The event that were doing in Somerville puts pressure on whitewashed conceptions of the Fourth of July, as many people to this day still view it as a celebration of American food, fireworks, and freedom. Wells, which was incorporated into the preface of her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.. He wrote a glowing letter of encouragement to Harriet Tubman, which served as the preface to Sarah Bradfords 1869 biography about Tubmans life. I will show you a man-drover. He refers to the Constitution as a "Glorious Liberty Document". And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! Over 150,000 persons were sold between 1820 and 1830, and over 300,000 were sold between 1850 and 1860.[15]. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Summary: "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", otherwise known as "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," Frederick Douglassoutlines a careful argument against the institution of slavery and more specifically the Fugitive Slave Act. (3) $3.99. Random House. 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. He wrote and presented a speech that challenged . [11] Additionally, he had spoken there less than three months prior to this speech, on March 25. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. Douglass vividly describes the conditions under which those enslaved are bought and sold; he says that they are treated as no more than animals. You may rejoice, I must mourn. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. In spite of his praise of the Founding Fathers, he maintains that slaves owe nothing to and have no positive feelings towards the founding of the United States. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal!And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. What characteristics does he praise about them? You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. As with rivers so with nations. Many of its most eloquent Divines. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? 5.0. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. $ 3.60. [28][29] The head of the organization responsible for the memorial speculated that it was vandalized in response to the removal of Confederate monuments in the wake of the George Floyd protests.[30]. Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, on July. 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! Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? 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. 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. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. 4th period Mrs. Landrew Fredrick Douglass Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. Douglass then discusses the internal slave trade in America. 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.What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? Ossie DavisA Voice Ringing O'er the Gale! Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.What, then, remains to be argued? True Christians, according to Douglass, should not stand idly by while the rights and liberty of others are stripped away. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? He argues that the Constitution does not permit slavery, contrary to the claims of contemporary defenders of the institution. [5] American studies professor Andrew S. Bibby argues that because many of the editions produced for educational use are abridged, they often misrepresent Douglass's original through omission or editorial focus. This act forced citizens to report people who had escaped their enslavement and escaped to a free state, under punishment of a fine or imprisonment. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. He took action to raise the voices of others and to aid their work on the national stage, especially that of two Black women in the last half of the 19th century. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Before you read the speech you can follow these links to learn more about Douglass's life and the evolution of his thought in this period. GAZETTE: What is the historical setting for this speech, and why did Douglass focus on the Fourth of July? 2. 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. My soul sickens at the sight. [19]. Kate Harris Date Published September 28, 2016 Last Modified November 14, 2021 Description. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term. One of the biggest challenges we face in our present moment is building sustainable movements that fundamentally change peoples minds about race and racism. Frederick Douglass, born a slave and later the most influential African American leader of the 1800s, addresses the hypocrisy of the US of maintaining slavery with its upheld ideals being freedom and independence on July 4th, 1852. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. 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. 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. Where these are, man is not sacred. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Douglass also stresses the view that slaves and free Americans are equal in nature. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. The speech has since been published under the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. No! Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. I am not that man. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. 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