To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Summary of Part 1:In part one of the speech "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July", Fredrick Douglass. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. You may rejoice, I must mourn. This act forced citizens to report people who had escaped their enslavement and escaped to a free state, under punishment of a fine or imprisonment. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. 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 or to write. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? [26] After the Civil War, Douglass said that "we" had achieved a great thing by gaining American independence during the American Revolutionary War, though he said it was not as great as what was achieved by the Civil War. Nevertheless, Douglass claims that this can change. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating . How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority of Him by whom the professed to he called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example or the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teach that we ought to obey mans law before the law of God.My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ, is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.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.At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. [6] Due to this and the variant titles given to it in various places, and the fact that it is called a July Fourth Oration but was actually delivered on July 5, some confusion has arisen about the date and contents of the speech. was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. The drove moves tardily. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? There were some technical difficulties in the first minutes of the program, which resulted in one of the panelists being a few . 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. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. But the 1852 "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech remains the best known of his addresses on the occasion, especially as it became even more widely read in the late-20th century,. The well-known speech was previously known as The Meaning of July the Fourth for the Negro. Later, the speech was re-titled based on Douglasss question, What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. It is neither. be warned! $ 3.60. 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. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. The audience must fulfill what the founders of the country advocated. The British accomplished this through religion or more specifically, the church. I repeat, I am glad this is so. O! In his speech, "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery . [13] Although the import of people directly from Africa had been banned in 1807,[14] the domestic slave trade, still legal, was thriving. Is it at the gateway? 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. 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. Nobody doubts it. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating freedom. Repetition Parallel structure ethos pathos Analogy Simile/Metaphor Rhetorical Question logos Part 2 - Slavery in America Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called uponto speak here today? Rhetoricians R. L. Heath and D. Waymer refer to this as the "paradox of the positive" because it highlights how something positive and meant to be positive can also exclude individuals. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. 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. or is it in the temple? Random House. The time was when such could be done. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. 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. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. the feeling of despair in the face of obstacles. PDF. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass annotation? 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. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. [16] Additionally, it awarded $10 to a judge who sentenced an individual to return to enslavement, while awarding only $5 if the claim was dismissed. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. Yea! It is neither. 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. Knowledge is becoming more readily available, Douglass said, and soon the American people will open their eyes to the atrocities they have been inflicting on their fellow Americans. Products. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. 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. 5.0. ts future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorr. Douglass believed that slavery could be eliminated with the support of the church, and also with the reexamination of what the Bible was actually saying. 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. (3) $3.99. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. On July 5, 1852, in . I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! 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 palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a mans liberty, hear only his accusers!In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. One of the biggest challenges we face in our present moment is building sustainable movements that fundamentally change peoples minds about race and racism. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he con signs to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. Douglass' speech came just 11 years before Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation hitting a poignant point in American history through his targeting of the slave as a crucial figure in desperate need of independence. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? To . Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. In July of 1852, Frederick Douglass prepares a speech known as The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro. 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. 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. Yea! The country can progress like it has before, transforming from being a colony of a far-away king to an independent nation. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christians God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. ROY: Douglass wrote the speech in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which effectively extended the reach of slave power in the South throughout the rest of the country. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. His own testimony is nothing. [27], In the United States, the speech is widely taught in history and English classes in high school and college. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. This truth is not a doubtful one. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. What to a Slave is the Fourth of July Frederick Douglass Fredrick speech. What will this years event be like? There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You know what is a swine-drover? He validates the feelings of injustice the Founders felt then juxtaposes their experiences with vivid descriptions of the harshness of slavery.[21]. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. In a Fourth of July holiday special, we hear the words of Frederick Douglass. Were not only going to be reading books like White Fragility, and Divided by Faith, but were also going to read and watch a number of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., and documentaries like 13th and King in the Wilderness, as we try to get at the root of racial division so we can come together to remove it. [20]:344. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. 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. 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. 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! A self-taught man, he escaped from slavery and eventually became a leader in the abolitionist movement. Is slavery among them? 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. 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. [19]. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. 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. [10] Douglass had spoken at Corinthian Hall in the past. official permission or approval. But we also need to invest as a city and as a society into reading and learning more about the present realities of oppressed peoples. 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. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. 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. 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! By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Easel Activity. [Under the Act] it became illegal not to arrest and return runaway slaves. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. 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. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. The United States does not have to stay the way it is. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act had passed Congress as part of the broader Compromise of 1850. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. But now is the time, the important time. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christians God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men! He became a leader in the abolitionist movement, which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. 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. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? [9][10] He had previously lived in Boston, but did not want his newspaper to interfere with sales of The Liberator, published by William Lloyd Garrison. My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. GAZETTE: What is the historical setting for this speech, and why did Douglass focus on the Fourth of July? The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft-interred with their bones. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, Mason and Dixons line has been obliterated, Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cumin. [16][17] Finally, the Act did not allow the accused individual of defending themselves in court. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal!And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. 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. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. 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. As with rivers so with nations. Yea! 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. [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]. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) the internal slave trade. It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future, Douglass said. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! Who can reason on such a proposition? 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.Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. 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. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art. 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. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.But, such is not the state of the case. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. 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 and sacrilegious irony. The Act also denied suspected slaves trial by jury or even the ability to testify on their own behalf in court. 2. 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. He took action to raise the voices of others and to aid their work on the national stage, especially that of two Black women in the last half of the 19th century. No! 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. 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