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 manhood of the slave is conceded. President John F. Kennedy On July 4, 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered this speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 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. 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 Travel through South America. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. Discover why Rev is the #1 speech-to-text service in the world. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. 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. His death, according to Douglass was not only tragic, but also prevented recently freed slaves and African Americans from gaining the ear of wise and well-intentioned leader. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Would you persuade more and rebuke less? But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. 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. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. 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. 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, . Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. What then remains to be argued? The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. Many of you understand them better than I do. Is it at the gateway? 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. Would you argue more and denounce less? The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. 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. Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Easily integrate Rev using our robust APIs to start building your product quickly. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. Is that a question for Republicans? But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, iswrong? I will not excuse. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. This is esteemed by some as a national trait perhaps a national weakness. Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. 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. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery the great sin and shame of America! 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. be warned! On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Frederick Douglass: (06:44) Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. 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. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. 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. Yea! Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Many of its most eloquent Divines. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. I am not that man. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. 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. Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, I must mourn. Frederick Douglass: (03:37) Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will in the name of humanity, which is outraged in the name of Liberty, which is fettered in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon dare to call and question and to denounce with all the emphasis I can command everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America. 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? You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! WebFrederick Douglass speech What to a Slave is the Fourth of July effectively argues against slavery. Suicide Note Revealed After Shocking Death, Mississippi Cops Beat, Waterboarded Handcuffed Black Men, Shot 1 For Dating White Women': Lawyers, Indicted! when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. in preference to the gospel,as preached by those Divines! Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. WebCelebrating 200 years of Frederick Douglass. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! 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. This 4th of July is yours, not mine. Fellow citizens, above your national tumultuous joy I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains heavy and grievous yesterday are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Transcribe your audio files to find high-impact insights in minutes. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. 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. Fair use is permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? 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 and write. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The Fugitive SlaveLawmakes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. Frederick Douglass: (09:38) Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. There is blasphemy in the thought. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. I think that, in whatever else I may be deficient, I have For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? 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. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. They that can, may; I cannot. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Oppression makes a wise man mad. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. They were not the men to look back. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. 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. 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. All Rights Reserved. How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. Frederick Douglass: (05:02) Born to an enslaved family in 1818, Frederick Douglass never knew his actual birthday, a fact not uncommon for those enslaved. America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. 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. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. 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! The text of Frederick Douglasss most famous speech, given in 1852, What, to a slave, is the Fourth of July? A chapter describing Douglasss early encounters with abolitionists, from his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, 1857. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? 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. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance.
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