speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. 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. To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. Frederick Douglass: (08:30) Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. 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. 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? I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. 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. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. Frederick Douglass: (06:44) Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. 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.. WebIn December 1860, the great American orator and former slave Frederick Douglass delivered one of his finest speeches, A Plea for Free Speech in Boston. In it, he boldly declared that liberty is meaningless where the right to utter ones thoughts and Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. 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, 1852, he was issuing a scathing indictment of American hypocrisy, Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy reminded readers. Youmay rejoice,Imust mourn. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. 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 meretoolsand body-guardsof the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans, if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands. will be found by Americans. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. Frederick Douglass: (00:26) From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today?
Speech 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?
Speech 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. In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation? But, such is not the state of the case. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. Oppression makes a wise man mad. VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. They inhabit all our Southern States. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. 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 task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. What to the Slave is the 4th of July? Speech Transcript by Frederick Douglass, Congressional Testimony & Hearing Transcripts. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. 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. Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance.
Frederick Douglass 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. Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
Speech Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth That point is conceded already. 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. 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 palpablebribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a mans liberty,hear only his accusers! 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. The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. 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. Is that a question for Republicans? Translated on-screen subtitles for videos. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. 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. 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. here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. I must mourn. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? welcome anything! If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. These rules are well established.
Our Composite Nation: Frederick Douglass America Many of its most eloquent Divines. 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. Thu 5 Jul 2018 07.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 24 Jul 2019 11.58 EDT. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most sacrilegious and shocking and would make me a reproach before God and the world. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. 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. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine! Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. 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! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Though a biting
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. Industry-leading accurate legal transcription to ensure you dont miss a statement.
speech I will use the severest language I can command. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. Frederick Douglass: (03:37) What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Nobody doubts it. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.. The din of business, too, is hushed. Oh! The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. 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! 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. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being?
Frederick Douglass speech - PBS The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. 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. The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and its crimes against God and man must be denounced. 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. Your cause would be much more likely to succeed. The time for such argument is past. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion. To him, your celebration is a sham, your boasted Liberty, an unholy license, your national greatness, swelling vanity. There is not a nation of the earth, guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Frederick Douglass' Descendants Read His Famous 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. Fellow-citizens! 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. Yea! 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. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. 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 population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. 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, Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions. Its the news, without the news. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. That point is conceded already. What? With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression. 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. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. Try Rev and save time transcribing, captioning, and subtitling. They were not the men to look back. 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. Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law.
Frederick Douglass The Fugitive SlaveLawmakes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. 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 I think that, in whatever else I may be deficient, I have