be warned! The time for such argument is passed.At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! . There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. (1982). GAZETTE: What is the historical setting for this speech, and why did Douglass focus on the Fourth of July? 5.0. 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.One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. 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 mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. [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. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. The speech notes the contradiction of the national ethos of United States and the way enslaved persons are treated. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? [20]:345He also attempts to demonstrate the irony of their inability to sympathize with the Black people they oppressed in cruel ways that the forefathers they valorized never experienced. 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. Stauffer, John. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. And it also imposed severe penalties on anyone who helped enslaved people to escape. 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 was born amid such sights and scenes. Random House. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. The well-known speech was previously known as The Meaning of July the Fourth for the Negro. Later, the speech was re-titled based on Douglasss question, What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. 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 crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. 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. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. 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. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. I will not. 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. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming hand-bills, headed CASH FOR NEGROES. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July | Historical Context The Colonial regime paved way for the transportation of slaves from different parts of the world, mostly from the African continent to work in southern states of America on cash crop plantations that generated a great source of income. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, Mason and Dixons line has been obliterated, Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cumin. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! 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. Is it at the gateway? Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? 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. [19]. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. In the second part of the speech, Douglass turns to the present and his own feelings about the 4th of July . Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. 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? So its important that our city and our society are outraged by the recent murders of unarmed black people. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. In an 1868 speech, he said, No man should be excluded from the government on the basis of his color, no woman on account of her sex. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. 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. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! 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. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. You have already declared it. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist. Must we allow symbols of racism on public land? For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. He had delivered a series of seven lectures about slavery there in the winter of 185051. Cling to this daycling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight, Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline, With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. He celebrates the efforts of the founding fathers of America for fighting back against the tyranny of England.[18]. Youll never experience a black hole, but Avi Loeb can help you imagine one, We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term., Level of cannabis use could determine post-op outcomes, Historian says Fla. dispute shows why AP class in African American studies is needed, Why Church Committee alums urged new House panel to avoid partisanship, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, Rewriting history to include all of it this time. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. Douglass referred not only to the captivity of enslaved people, but to the merciless exploitation and the cruelty and torture that slaves were subjected to in the United States. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.I have detained my audience entirely too long already. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.What, then, remains to be argued? 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. On July 5, 1852, in . America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. 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. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? 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. Summary of Part 1:In part one of the speech "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July", Fredrick Douglass. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.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 bum their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. In a Fourth of July holiday special, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. official permission or approval. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. [16][17] Finally, the Act did not allow the accused individual of defending themselves in court. 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? However, if slavery were abolished and equal rights given to all, that would no longer be the case. welcome anything! He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating . Yea! There should be no shoulder that does not bear the burden of the government. He had a prophetic vision for the future that he was always trying to work toward. we wept when we remembered Zion. [8] Frederick Douglass had moved to Rochester in 1847 in order to publish his newspaper The North Star. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. In his speech, "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery . When the dogs in your streets, 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 will I argue with you that the slave is a man!For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. 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 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! This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Text Frederick Douglass, " What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 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? Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it. After this, he turns his attention to the church. ROY: Douglass wrote the speech in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which effectively extended the reach of slave power in the South throughout the rest of the country. Douglass was a former slave of the 19th century and soon became a leader during the Abolitionist Movement. 2. Douglass denounces the churches for betraying their own biblical and Christian values. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. 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. I will show you a man-drover. Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. 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. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. 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. 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 palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a mans liberty, hear only his accusers!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. The speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. The speech has since been published under the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. Where these are, man is not sacred. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. 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! Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? 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. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. He can bring no witnesses for himself. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. I am not that man. But we also need to invest as a city and as a society into reading and learning more about the present realities of oppressed peoples. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. The Oratory of Fr. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. He is outraged by the lack of responsibility and indifference towards slavery that many sects have taken around the nation. [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. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.But, such is not the state of the case. 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. A self-taught man, he escaped from slavery and eventually became a leader in the abolitionist movement. 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. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. [26] After the Civil War, Douglass said that "we" had achieved a great thing by gaining American independence during the American Revolutionary War, though he said it was not as great as what was achieved by the Civil War. Douglass addressed a part of the population for which the day had huge significance the true independence, he argues, is not for the American people, but for the American slave. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It is said that America is built on the idea of liberty and freedom, but Douglass tells his audience that more than anything, it is built on inconsistencies and hypocrisies that have been overlooked for so long they appear to be truths. 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