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! What to the American slave is your 4th of July? You live and must die, and you must do your work. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! 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. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. WebThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. Oh, had I, the ability, and could I reach the nations ear, I would today pour out a fiery steam of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. 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. To him, your celebration is a sham, your boasted Liberty, an unholy license, your national greatness, swelling vanity. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. 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, . 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 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. 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 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 point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? 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. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. Nobody doubts it. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. Web"The Lessons of the Hour" Speech by Frederick Douglass, January 9, 1894 Friends and Fellow Citizens : No man should come before an audience like the one by whose presence I am now honored, without a noble object and a fixed and earnest purpose. The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass 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. Become a freelancer and work on your own terms. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. 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! 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. You may well cherish the memory of such men. Frederick Douglass delivered 'best Fourth of July speech in You were under the British Crown. 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. But now is the time, the important time. A Nation's Story: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. I am not that man. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. 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? Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. Towards the end of It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. 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. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. What then remains to be argued? Travel through South America. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. 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. 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. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slaves point of view. That point is conceded already. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. Yea! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Under Title 17 U.S.C. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. What, to the American Slave, Is Your Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. 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. They were great in their day and generation. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. They inhabit all our Southern States. Web" 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 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. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Frederick Douglass: (00:26) Frederick Douglass: (01:08) Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. Go search where you will. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! 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. Is a matter, the set with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? The propriety of the nation must be startled. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. be warned! The questions are designed to provoke thought and guide the students through the document. They were not the men to look back. This is a primary source reading analysis of Frederick Douglass' famous speech. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. 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! 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. This is esteemed by some as a national trait perhaps a national weakness. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! A RESTful API to access Revs workforce of fast, high quality transcriptionists and captioners. The drove moves tardily. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. 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? They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. 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 in sacrilegious irony. 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? That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. 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. 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. His own testimony is nothing. Born to an enslaved family in 1818, Frederick Douglass never knew his actual birthday, a fact not uncommon for those enslaved. The Fugitive SlaveLawmakes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. 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. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. What, then, remains to be argued? Community Reading: Frederick Douglass's "What 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.