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 'Address' may be had at this office, price ten cents, a single copy, or six dollars per hundred. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. 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. 00 Comments Please sign inor registerto post comments. He wrote a glowing letter of encouragement to Harriet Tubman, which served as the preface to Sarah Bradfords 1869 biography about Tubmans life. In the end, Douglass wants to keep his hope and faith in humanity high. one of the most important speeches of the 19th century? 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. 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. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. . Follow the drove to New Orleans. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. Douglass argues that religion is the center of the problem but also the main solution to it. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. Wells, which was incorporated into the preface of her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. Students also viewed 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. According to Douglass, these inconsistencies have made the United States the object of mockery and often contempt among the various nations of the world. The speech notes the contradiction of the national ethos of United States and the way enslaved persons are treated. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. [16][17] Finally, the Act did not allow the accused individual of defending themselves in court. 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. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. 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. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. 2. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. Panel on dispossession of African Americans says burying truth keeps Black Americans dispossessed, Legal scholar and historian puts the push to remove Confederate statues in context, Members of the community share memories, plans, hopes for the holiday, Quantum computing simulation reveals possible wormhole-like dynamics. 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. In a Fourth of July holiday special, we hear the words of Frederick Douglass. During the 1850's, the Fourth of July served as a reminder of the many horrors and injustices in the world. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. One of the biggest challenges we face in our present moment is building sustainable movements that fundamentally change peoples minds about race and racism. What characteristics does he praise about them? No! If youre not a person of color, its one thing to go to a couple of events or protests, or to read a few articles and move on. 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. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. Yea! Yea! 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. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. But its quite another to change the way you see yourself and to grow into a person deeply committed to long-term interracial coalition building. 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. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? He faults America for utter hypocrisy and betrayal of those values in maintaining the institution of slavery. Keidrick Roy, the host of the virtual reading event. 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. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. 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 speech has since been published under the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth! To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. These rules are well established. 15 November's Documents in Detail webinar was about Frederick Douglass's What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, his oration delivered on 5 July 1862. Douglass referred not only to the captivity of enslaved people, but to the merciless exploitation and the cruelty and torture that slaves were subjected to in the United States. 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. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The country can progress like it has before, transforming from being a colony of a far-away king to an independent nation. Oh! In this collection, students will review the life of Frederick Douglass and learn about one of his most famous speeches, "The Meaning of Fourth of July for the Negro" (it is also commonly referred to as "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July). 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. 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.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.Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. [5], A statue of Douglass erected in Rochester in 2018 was torn down on July 5, 2020the 168th anniversary of the speech. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act had passed Congress as part of the broader Compromise of 1850. 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? that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. 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. On July 5, 1852, in . [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 high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! 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. 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. He argues that the Constitution does not permit slavery, contrary to the claims of contemporary defenders of the institution. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. 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. 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. [13] Although the import of people directly from Africa had been banned in 1807,[14] the domestic slave trade, still legal, was thriving. 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. In short, it gave the federal government an active role in maintaining the Souths system of slavery. 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. 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. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.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 bum their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? GAZETTE: This is your second year as host of Reading Frederick Douglass Together in Somerville. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? I hold that every American citizen has a fight 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. 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. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. 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. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. Who can reason on such a proposition? His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. 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. 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. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? Summary: "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", otherwise known as "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," Frederick Douglassoutlines a careful argument against the institution of slavery and more specifically the Fugitive Slave Act. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. 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. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. In spite of his praise of the Founding Fathers, he maintains that slaves owe nothing to and have no positive feelings towards the founding of the United States. 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.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. be warned! What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem the Fugitive Slave Law as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. 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? we wept when we remembered Zion. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. In July of 1852, Frederick Douglass prepares a speech known as The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he con signs to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. You may rejoice, I must mourn. 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. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. Is slavery among them? 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, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. 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. [5] Many copies of one section of it, beginning in paragraph 32, have been circulated online. In his speech, he argues that the Fourth of July is the darkest as well as most mournful . In the second part of the speech, Douglass turns to the present and his own feelings about the 4th of July . Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. 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