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. by Frederick Douglass 1852 11th Grade Lexile: 1140 Font Size Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was an African American social reformer, orator, and writer. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.Fellow-citizens! The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. He also wrote a letter to Ida B. That is a question Frederick Douglass posed 169 Julys ago in a speech to a group of abolitionists, one that's become perhaps his most famous. In short, it gave the federal government an active role in maintaining the Souths system of slavery. 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. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. 2003. My soul sickens at the sight. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! ARI . [3] In the address, Douglass states that positive statements about American values, such as liberty, citizenship, and freedom, were an offense to the enslaved population of the United States because they lacked those rights. He argues that the Constitution does not permit slavery, contrary to the claims of contemporary defenders of the institution. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. He wrote a glowing letter of encouragement to Harriet Tubman, which served as the preface to Sarah Bradfords 1869 biography about Tubmans life. [11] Additionally, he had spoken there less than three months prior to this speech, on March 25. 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 nationa system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. Worksheet Excerpt Analyzing Rhetorical Devices in "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?": Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. 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. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. The 'Address' may be had at this office, price ten cents, a single copy, or six dollars per hundred. be warned! Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to. welcome anything! or is it in the temple? Is that a question for Republicans? 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. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. Douglass, Frederick, ed. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! ROY:One of the things that Douglass writings shows us is that he believed in amplifying a variety of voices. During the Civil War, Douglass said that since Massachusetts had been the first state to join the Patriot cause during the American Revolutionary War, black men should go to Massachusetts to enlist in the Union Army. No! Without this fight, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. 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.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.Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. I hold that every American citizen has a fight 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. Douglass then returns to the topic of the founding of the United States. Kate Harris Date Published September 28, 2016 Last Modified November 14, 2021 Description. [9][10] He had previously lived in Boston, but did not want his newspaper to interfere with sales of The Liberator, published by William Lloyd Garrison. In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Frederick Douglass sought not only to convince people of the wrongfulness of slavery but also to make abolition more acceptable to Northern whites. On 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 orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. Oppression makes a wise man mad. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose, a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.Fellow-citizens! As the project scholar, my role is to advise the process as it rolls out, to give a talk that provides contemporary and historical context and to facilitate the community discussion around the speech against the backdrop of other relevant issues. Yea! It is neither. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Oh! A self-taught man, he escaped from slavery and eventually became a leader in the abolitionist movement. 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! I lived on Philpot Street, Fells Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. 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! What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? [4], The speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. [5], A statue of Douglass erected in Rochester in 2018 was torn down on July 5, 2020the 168th anniversary of the speech. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The time for such argument is passed.At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. You have already declared it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. $ 3.60. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. More than 150 years later, Keidrick Roy, a doctoral student in American Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a U.S. Air Force veteran, will host a virtual community reading and discussion of the storied speech at the Somerville Museum on Thursday as part of the annual state-wide MassHumanities program Reading Frederick Douglass Together.. 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! Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? "[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. we wept when we remembered Zion. Nevertheless, Douglass claims that this can change. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? 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. One of the parts of the speech that resonates with me the most is when Douglass says: What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. You know what is a swine-drover? They that can, may; I cannot. Yea! GAZETTE: Why is it important to do this kind of community-building work at a local level? In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. In his speech, "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery . 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. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, the slave plantation, from which I escaped, and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you, This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. He faults America for utter hypocrisy and betrayal of those values in maintaining the institution of slavery. 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? 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! The founding fathers left black people and women out of these rights for "everyone." They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. [4], Noted for its biting irony and bitter rhetoric, and acute textual analysis of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Christian Bible, the speech is among the most widely known of all of Douglass's writings. dismay. Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. I will show you a man-drover. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. 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 have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.What, then, remains to be argued? Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Knowledge is becoming more readily available, Douglass said, and soon the American people will open their eyes to the atrocities they have been inflicting on their fellow Americans. The British accomplished this through religion or more specifically, the church. 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. we wept when we remembered Zion. To the slave, Douglass tells the audience, "your 4th of July is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license [for enslaving blacks] . Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. 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. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he con signs to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.. The Bible addresses all such persons as scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. Random House. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. 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