frederick douglass speech transcript frederick douglass speech transcript

I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. I was born amid such sights and scenes. The propriety of the nation must be startled. Roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world. The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. I lived on Philpot Street, Fells Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. 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. All Rights Reserved. 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.. Discover why Rev is the #1 speech-to-text service in the world. 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. Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. The drove moves tardily. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. 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. 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 hypocrisy a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. 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. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. 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. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! There is blasphemy in the thought. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. He can bring no witnesses for himself. I answer: a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. Juneteenth Reading List: 10 Books To Learn More About Black Independence Day, Your email will be shared with newsone.com and subject to its, 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, . Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. 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. 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. Frederick Douglass: (06:03) The manhood of the slave is conceded. 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. 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! Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is, today, in active operation in this boasted republic. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? The time for such argument is past. 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? Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. 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, In the text it states, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave- we are called upon to prove that we are men? (Douglas 763). 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. 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. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. 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.. had I the ability, and could I reach the nations ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, I am not that 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? The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interest a nations jubilee. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. 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. Space is comparatively annihilated. 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. Your cause would be much more likely to succeed. It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. Oh! The anti-slavery movementtherewas 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 of a hostile position towards that movement. The Best Speech-to-Text Solution for Your Business Learn how Rev fits into your businesses workflow. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. I am not included within the pales of this glorious anniversary. Transcripts & captions for a better media workflow. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. Would you persuade more and rebuke less? Your President, your Secretary of State, ourlords,nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. we wept when we remembered Zion. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Speech-to-Text live streaming for live captions, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition API. They that can, may; I cannot. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. 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 burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Where these are, man is not sacred. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. Yet they persevered. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. That year will come, and freedoms reign. Then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful? I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. Americans! There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. 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. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? That point is conceded already. His own testimony is nothing. The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. You were under the British Crown. WebBoth anniversaries remind us that the fight for independence and equality did not end in the 18th century - a theme highlighted in Douglass speech. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. One of the parts of the speech that resonates with me the most is when Douglass says: What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. welcome anything! I must mourn. 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. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. 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 in sacrilegious irony. You may rejoice, I must mourn.. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. 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!