A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal! In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. There is blasphemy in the thought. weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! Cling to this day cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. 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. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. That he is the rightful owner of his own body? But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. 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. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. At the time of the delivery of this speech, Douglass had been living in Rochester, New York for several years editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper. He was invited to give a fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. In the early 1850s, tensions over slavery were high across the county. Frederick Douglass's, What To the Slave Is the Fourth of They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. 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. But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. The manhood of the slave is conceded. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. When Douglass delivered his famous The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro address before an audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? I am not that man. All Rights Reserved. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. 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. 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. And while slavery has long been abolished and outlawed, the sentiment behind the address still applies in many unfortunate ways when it comes to the overall Black experience in America. Transcript Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? Frederick Douglass speech - PBS Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. WebFrederick Douglass speech What to a Slave is the Fourth of July effectively argues against slavery. Frederick Douglass July Fourth Speech Full Text: Read Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout We have Washington toour father. Alas! I will not excuse. He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, newspaper publisher, and respected abolitionist. My subject then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. Transcribe your audio files to find high-impact insights in minutes. You may well cherish the memory of such men. 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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. 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. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nations history the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, who does not know that slavery is wrong for him. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent African-American professional men in celebration of the twenty-first anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.After the toast provided by former Senator Blanche K. Bruce, 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! Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. You have already declared it. 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. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. We need the storm. 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. I must mourn. 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. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. Speech 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? If I do forget, if I do not 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. Speech-to-Text live streaming for live captions, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition API. 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: This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. 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. 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. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers yourUnion. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. 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? See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. I will use the severest language I can command. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. WebBoth anniversaries remind us that the fight for independence and equality did not end in the 18th century - a theme highlighted in Douglass speech. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) 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. Then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful? Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. As with rivers so with nations. 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. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary!
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