What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? 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. 2. 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. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Douglass was a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. or is it in the temple? He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. Alison Drasner, the project coordinator for the Somerville Museum, teamed up with Dave Ortega at the Somerville Media Center to prerecord voices of 50 Somerville residents, including my 7-year-old daughter, Charlotte, to read sections of the speech. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Douglass was a former slave of the 19th century and soon became a leader during the Abolitionist Movement. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. 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. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. What will this years event be like? That point is conceded already. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Great Britain, and many other countries of that time, had already abolished slavery from its territories. 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! I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.I have detained my audience entirely too long already. that it should be so; yet so it is. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future, Douglass said. Yea! Is that a question for Republicans? 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. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. The speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. Summary of Part 1:In part one of the speech "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July", Fredrick Douglass. be warned! Oppression makes a wise man mad. 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. [Throughout the speech] Douglass looks at the contradictions between the reality of slavery and the lofty claims of a just society outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This year is pretty challenging in the wake of COVID-19, and the event is going to be held online instead of before a live audience like we did last year. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating freedom. You profess to believe that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth, and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. 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 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. Douglass declares that true freedom can not exist in America if Black people are still enslaved there and is adamant that the end of slavery is near. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. Youll never experience a black hole, but Avi Loeb can help you imagine one, We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term., Level of cannabis use could determine post-op outcomes, Historian says Fla. dispute shows why AP class in African American studies is needed, Why Church Committee alums urged new House panel to avoid partisanship, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, Rewriting history to include all of it this time. Who can reason on such a proposition? They inhabit all our Southern States. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. 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. ROY: The better we get to know the people that we live with, that we work around, that we see at the coffee shop, and the more we talk about these important racial issues with one another, the easier it will be to heal our divided communities. However, if slavery were abolished and equal rights given to all, that would no longer be the case. ROY:One of the things that Douglass writings shows us is that he believed in amplifying a variety of voices. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done. PDF. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. In short, it gave the federal government an active role in maintaining the Souths system of slavery. The drove moves tardily. I repeat, I am glad this is so. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers. your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery." Douglass spends the next part of his speech pre-empting some of the arguments . Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. 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. 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. The Bible addresses all such persons as scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more. Text Frederick Douglass, " What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? He wrote a glowing letter of encouragement to Harriet Tubman, which served as the preface to Sarah Bradfords 1869 biography about Tubmans life. 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? It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. The manhood of the slave is conceded. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. Yea! 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. Kate Harris Date Published September 28, 2016 Last Modified November 14, 2021 Description. You may rejoice, I must mourn. I am not that man. 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. Douglass argues that religion is the center of the problem but also the main solution to it. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moments warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. He expresses his belief in the speech that he and other slaves are fighting the same fight in terms of wishing to be free that White Americans, the ancestors of the white people he is addressing, fought seventy years earlier. The time for such argument is passed.At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. 2003. 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. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. The occasion was the Society's Fourth of July celebration, but Douglass refused to give the speech on July 4; he would not celebrate the holiday so long as African Americans remained enslaved. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. the feeling of despair in the face of obstacles. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. 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. [28][29] The head of the organization responsible for the memorial speculated that it was vandalized in response to the removal of Confederate monuments in the wake of the George Floyd protests.[30]. He can bring no witnesses for himself. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. 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. 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. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? 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. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. Nevertheless, Douglass claims that this can change. [19]. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose, a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.Fellow-citizens! That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" 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