Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.What, then, remains to be argued? Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. Stauffer, John. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. 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. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? 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. You may rejoice, I must mourn. 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. He argues that though the international slave trade is correctly decried as abhorrent, the people of the United States are far less vocal in their opposition to domestic slave trade. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! [12], According to the 1850 Census, there were around 3.2 million enslaved persons in the United States. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass annotation? His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery. 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. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully 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! To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. Many of its most eloquent Divines. He also wrote a letter to Ida B. 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. That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. In July of 1852, Frederick Douglass prepares a speech known as The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro. The drove moves tardily. 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. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Not everyone. 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. 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. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act had passed Congress as part of the broader Compromise of 1850. 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. Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cuminabridge the fight 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. If youre not a person of color, its one thing to go to a couple of events or protests, or to read a few articles and move on. The 4th of July Address, delivered in Corinthian Hall, by Frederick Douglass, is published on good paper, and makes a neat pamphlet of forty pages. [17] This act drew the ire of the abolitionist movement,[9] and was directly criticized by Douglass in his speech. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? [20]:344. 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. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. 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. To the slave, Douglass tells the audience, "your 4th of July is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license [for enslaving blacks] . Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. As with rivers so with nations. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. To honor Black History Month, as an introduction or review of rhetorical appeals and devices, or as a speech exemplar, this Frederick Douglass "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" rhetoric activity is a fabulous addition to any lesson. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. 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. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. 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? In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. we wept when we remembered Zion. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. He talks about how Americans are proud of their country and their religion and how they rejoice in the name of freedom and liberty and yet they do not offer those things to millions of their country's residents. The speech has since been published under the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Douglass argues that religion is the center of the problem but also the main solution to it. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? According to Douglass, these inconsistencies have made the United States the object of mockery and often contempt among the various nations of the world. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead or a hostile position towards that movement. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. In his speech, "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery . They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. I am also hosting a summer reading and discussion series called Race, Fragility, and Anti-Racism through the Somerville Museum and the City on a Hill network of local churches. Douglass vividly describes the conditions under which those enslaved are bought and sold; he says that they are treated as no more than animals. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Douglass then pivots to the present, stating that "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future". 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. 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! 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. So its important that our city and our society are outraged by the recent murders of unarmed black people. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. 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. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;. 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. He describes the legislation as "tyrannical," and believes that it is in "violation of justice.". Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! What is now known as the "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 as an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. These rules are well established. PDF. [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. Over 150,000 persons were sold between 1820 and 1830, and over 300,000 were sold between 1850 and 1860.[15]. In the second part of the speech, Douglass turns to the present and his own feelings about the 4th of July . "Meaning of the Fourth of July to a Negro" by Bridget Durham The Fourth of July is a day of celebration for many Americans because on July 4th, 1776, America declared independence from Britain and said that everyone was free under the US government, right? 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. 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. 15 November's Documents in Detail webinar was about Frederick Douglass's What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, his oration delivered on 5 July 1862. He is outraged by the lack of responsibility and indifference towards slavery that many sects have taken around the nation. I repeat, I am glad this is so. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. 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. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass-- a former American slave, abolitionist leader and adroit speaker-- spoke in Rochester, New York about the affectation of celebrating independence. 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? 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. The Oratory of Fr. Great Britain, and many other countries of that time, had already abolished slavery from its territories. 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. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Great for your high school American Literature class. It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! In that speech, he cast the abolitionist movement as being engaged in a "War" against defenders of slavery. 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. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. (1982). 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