He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. The time for such argument is passed. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. 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. Fromwhat quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.. 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. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. It is neither. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. What was possible for him, he sincerely believed was possible for any man who was willing to work hard. speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. 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. Space is comparatively annihilated. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered.
This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. Its quite a remarkable speech as Douglass in a way reenacts his own journey in appreciation for the work that Lincoln did, not just for blacks, but for whites in this country. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. Transcribe your audio files to find high-impact insights in minutes. welcome anything! 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. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. 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. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. WebOn December 3, 1860, Frederick Douglass and a group of fellow abolitionists met at the Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston for a discussion centered around the following Your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless, your shouts of Liberty and equality, hallow mocked, your prayers and hymns your sermons and Thanksgivings with all your religious parade in solemnity are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, a thin veil to cover up crimes, which would disgrace a nation of savages. You may rejoice, I must mourn.. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? 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. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. 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 and sacrilegious irony. What to the Slave is the 4th of July? Speech Transcript by Frederick Douglass, Congressional Testimony & Hearing Transcripts. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Standing here identified with the American bondsmen, making his wrongs mine. This Fourth [of] July isyours, notmine. 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. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. How unlike the politicians of an hour! It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried mens souls. 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. 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? Frederick Douglass: (06:03) For it is not light that is needed, but fire. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. that it should be so; yet so it is. Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time.
Frederick Douglass's, What To the Slave Is the Fourth of 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. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. 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. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! We need the storm. 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. Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. Difference between Rittenhouse and McMichael-Bryan verdicts? 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. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today?
"What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" Speech Transcript Read its preamble, consider its purposes. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. What, then, remains to be argued? Many of you understand them better than I do. 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? 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? Frederick Douglass: (04:09) WebFrederick Douglass speech What to a Slave is the Fourth of July effectively argues against slavery. WebAn excerpt from the 1847 Frederick Douglass speech given for the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 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! 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. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. 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. in preference to the gospel,as preached by those Divines! The manhood of the slave is conceded. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. But now is the time, the important time. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? They that can, may; I cannot. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. As with rivers so with nations. 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. Speech-to-Text API for pre-recorded audio, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition engine. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. I cannot. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. Fellow-citizens! Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. The slave holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. The propriety of the nation must be startled. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. Translated on-screen subtitles for videos. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! 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 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. 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. In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. 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.. Born to an enslaved family in 1818, Frederick Douglass never knew his actual birthday, a fact not uncommon for those enslaved. Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations Jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from his limbs? The drove moves tardily. Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Where these are, man is not sacred. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! 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. 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. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. No! 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. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem the Fugitive Slave Law as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, andnota vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. All Rights Reserved. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. 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, thenwill I argue with you that the slave is a man! Transcripts & captions for a better media workflow. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. Frederick Douglass: (06:44) I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cumin abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. Roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who