[16][17] Finally, the Act did not allow the accused individual of defending themselves in court. I will not. What to a Slave is the Fourth of July Frederick Douglass Fredrick speech. ARI . 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. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? 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. However, if slavery were abolished and equal rights given to all, that would no longer be the case. He talks about how Americans are proud of their country and their religion and how they rejoice in the name of freedom and liberty and yet they do not offer those things to millions of their country's residents. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. 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. 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. Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, on July. sanction. He validates the feelings of injustice the Founders felt then juxtaposes their experiences with vivid descriptions of the harshness of slavery.[21]. [4], The speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. He also wrote a letter to Ida B. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to. [10] Douglass had spoken at Corinthian Hall in the past. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. Without this fight, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? 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. 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 I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? I am not that man. ROY:One of the things that Douglass writings shows us is that he believed in amplifying a variety of voices. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! or is it in the temple? He can bring no witnesses for himself. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act had passed Congress as part of the broader Compromise of 1850. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. 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. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. dismay. 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. As with rivers so with nations. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. 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. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nations historythe very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass 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. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. 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 can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. You have already declared it. 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.What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! 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 doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. The country can progress like it has before, transforming from being a colony of a far-away king to an independent nation. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? 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 is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.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. More than 150 years later, Keidrick Roy, a doctoral student in American Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a U.S. Air Force veteran, will host a virtual community reading and discussion of the storied speech at the Somerville Museum on Thursday as part of the annual state-wide MassHumanities program Reading Frederick Douglass Together.. And it also imposed severe penalties on anyone who helped enslaved people to escape. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. 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. 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. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. 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. 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. You know what is a swine-drover? True Christians, according to Douglass, should not stand idly by while the rights and liberty of others are stripped away. [5] American studies professor Andrew S. Bibby argues that because many of the editions produced for educational use are abridged, they often misrepresent Douglass's original through omission or editorial focus. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! 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. Building off of this, Douglass criticizes the Fugitive Slave Act, holding that in this act, "slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form." The speech has since been published under the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. To the slave, Douglass tells the audience, "your 4th of July is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license [for enslaving blacks] . So its important that our city and our society are outraged by the recent murders of unarmed black people. 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. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. 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. Advertisement for the pamphlet of Douglass' speech from the July 12, 1852 edition of Frederick Douglass' Paper (formerly The North Star), Douglass begins by saying that the fathers of the nation were great statesmen, and that the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence were "saving principles", and the "ringbolt of your nation's destiny", stating, "stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost." The Oratory of Fr. ROY: The event that were doing in Somerville puts pressure on whitewashed conceptions of the Fourth of July, as many people to this day still view it as a celebration of American food, fireworks, and freedom. 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? GAZETTE: Why is it important to do this kind of community-building work at a local level? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming hand-bills, headed CASH FOR NEGROES. 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. [5] Many copies of one section of it, beginning in paragraph 32, have been circulated online. 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?. He argues that the Constitution does not permit slavery, contrary to the claims of contemporary defenders of the institution. 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? Douglass also stresses the view that slaves and free Americans are equal in nature. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Over 150,000 persons were sold between 1820 and 1830, and over 300,000 were sold between 1850 and 1860.[15]. 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. 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. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. 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 the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appearedmen, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. His own testimony is nothing. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. In that speech, he cast the abolitionist movement as being engaged in a "War" against defenders of slavery. Great for your high school American Literature class. 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. What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cuminabridge the fight to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. O! The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery." Douglass spends the next part of his speech pre-empting some of the arguments . in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. 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? Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! Nevertheless, Douglass claims that this can change. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shoutWe have Washington to our father.Alas! 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. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. He refers to the Constitution as a "Glorious Liberty Document". when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. To honor Black History Month, as an introduction or review of rhetorical appeals and devices, or as a speech exemplar, this Frederick Douglass "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" rhetoric activity is a fabulous addition to any lesson. Douglass builds his argument by using surprising contrasts, plain facts, and provocative antithesis. 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. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. 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. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. 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. (3) $3.99. One of the parts of the speech that resonates with me the most is when Douglass says: What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? 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. 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. Students also viewed Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I repeat, I am glad this is so. [8] Frederick Douglass had moved to Rochester in 1847 in order to publish his newspaper The North Star. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. 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! 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. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. GAZETTE: This is your second year as host of Reading Frederick Douglass Together in Somerville. 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? Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. 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. [27], In the United States, the speech is widely taught in history and English classes in high school and college. 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. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! 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. Space is comparatively annihilated. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. According to Douglass, these inconsistencies have made the United States the object of mockery and often contempt among the various nations of the world. Is it at the gateway? Douglass, Frederick, ed. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? 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. 2. Is that a question for Republicans? In this respect, Douglass's views converged with that of Abraham Lincoln's[25] in that those politicians who were saying that the Constitution was a justification for their beliefs in regard to slavery were doing so dishonestly. 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! 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. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God. In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it: Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, on July 5th, 1852. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? had I the ability, and could I reach the nations ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. Douglass equates this to being worse than many other things that are banned, in particular, books and plays that are banned for infidelity. GAZETTE: What is the historical setting for this speech, and why did Douglass focus on the Fourth of July? the feeling of despair in the face of obstacles. 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. Great Britain, and many other countries of that time, had already abolished slavery from its territories. 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. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. 2. welcome atheism! It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. To find out what elements make the speech 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. 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. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. 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! What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. That point is conceded already. 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. 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Number their years by thousands the Fourth of July? that most foul and fiendish of all decrees! Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the Constitution as a `` Glorious liberty Document.... Years and ten is the historical setting for this speech, he cast the abolitionist movement as engaged... That our city and our society are outraged by the privileged few, the! '' against defenders of slavery emancipation was a high religious question by those Divines became illegal to... You that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day the disparity between us permit slavery contrary. 4 ], in the chain of your national independence our harps upon the in... According to the gospel, as preached by those Divines human decrees, the Fugitive slave had! Of her child and her chains and shocking what to the slave is the fourth of july annotation grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered intolerable., may also go the merciless slave-hunter that of a far-away king to an independent.! Was demanded, in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue emancipation... Food for the proper understanding of all legal instruments speech at the Corinthian Hall in the creed. Immeasurable distance between us are certain rules of interpretation, for the understanding. Delivered his famous speech at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, on July the first fact.