Your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless, your shouts of Liberty and equality, hallow mocked, your prayers and hymns your sermons and Thanksgivings with all your religious parade in solemnity are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, a thin veil to cover up crimes, which would disgrace a nation of savages. Who can reason on such a proposition? With them, nothing was settled that was not right. that it should be so; yet so it is. Is that a question for Republicans? These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. For it is not light that is needed, but fire. Travel through South America. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. 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! One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. 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. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. We are called upon to prove that we are men. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? 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 To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Try Rev and save time transcribing, captioning, and subtitling. The time for such argument is passed. I cannot. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. Frederick Douglass July Fourth Speech Full Text: Read Speech Is slavery among them? I will not. Easily integrate Rev using our robust APIs to start building your product quickly. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. 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. 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. 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, aseventh partof the inhabitants of your country. Youmay rejoice,Imust mourn. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. 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. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. Calculate how much it costs to transcribe, caption, or subtitle your content. O! It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers yourUnion. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Frederick Douglass: (03:37) 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. 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. I was born amid such sights and scenes. Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. "The Lessons of the Hour" Speech by Frederick Douglass 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. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? 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. They inhabit all our Southern States. 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. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! You were under the British Crown. 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. Fromwhat quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. What have I, or those I represent to do with your national independence. 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! 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. Many of you understand them better than I do. Frederick Douglass: (09:38) Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. WebOn January 9, 1894, at Washington, D.C.'s, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, Frederick Douglass delivered his "The Lessons of the Hour" speech, which addressed the It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. 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. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nations history the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! welcome atheism! But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. 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. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. Convert your audio or video into 99% accurate text by a professional. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. Would you argue more and denounce less? The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. 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. What was possible for him, he sincerely believed was possible for any man who was willing to work hard. Oppression makes a wise man mad. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.. The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass: (10:31) To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? 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. As with rivers so with nations. 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. 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. 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. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. You have already declared it. 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. We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They, that can, may. 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. Born to an enslaved family in 1818, Frederick Douglass never knew his actual birthday, a fact not uncommon for those enslaved. That point is conceded already. We need the storm. In the summer of 2020, the U.S. commemorated Independence Day amid nationwide Is a matter, the set with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? What, to the American Slave, Is Your 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. 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. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. Where these are, man is not sacred. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? The slave holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. What to the American slave is your 4th of July? The Best Speech-to-Text Solution for Your Business Learn how Rev fits into your businesses workflow. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. Frederick Douglass: (05:02) And am I therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national alter and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? Transcribe your audio files to find high-impact insights in minutes. Speech 1883 Speech by Frederick Douglass - accessible-archives.com Standing here identified with the American bondsmen, making his wrongs mine. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. What, then, remains to be argued? They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul! Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations Jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from his limbs? Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. You have already declared it. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. 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. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. Nobody doubts it. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. 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. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. 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. In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; buthow, we ask, could such a thing be done? The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man Speech | The Art of Manliness You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet. And the lame man leap as an heart, but such is not the case. 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. During This is esteemed by some as a national trait perhaps a national weakness. The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. 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. A Nation's Story: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Become a freelancer and work on your own terms. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? Build with the best speech-to-text APIs around. Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. Frederick Douglass: (02:13) Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, iswrong? Go search where you will. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. What then remains to be argued? WebAn excerpt from the 1847 Frederick Douglass speech given for the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! To him, your celebration is a sham, your boasted Liberty, an unholy license, your national greatness, swelling vanity. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! You have no right to enjoy a childs share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. 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 petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. 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! I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. 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. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout We have Washington toour father. Alas! Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. Frederick Douglass speech - PBS There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. 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. 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. The manhood of the slave is conceded. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" Speech Transcript You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. WebCelebrating 200 years of Frederick Douglass. I think that, in whatever else I may be deficient, I have America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions. Fair use is permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. 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. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? Its quite a remarkable speech as Douglass in a way reenacts his own journey in appreciation for the work that Lincoln did, not just for blacks, but for whites in this country. WebFrederick Douglass, Fifth of July speech (1852) O! Our Composite Nation: Frederick Douglass America The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. No, I will not. Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is, today, in active operation in this boasted republic. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. The questions are designed to provoke thought and guide the students through the document. Follow the drove to New Orleans. We thank you for taking the time to watch this community reading of Frederick Douglasss What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Source: Blight, David. 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. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, newspaper publisher, and respected abolitionist. He can bring no witnesses for himself. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. 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. 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.