Hi everyone:
I just received this via e-mail. I think it is an appropriate read
especially when one considers the fact that this country's Independence Day
is tomorrow.
Wonderful speech by a great man.
Yus
Frederick Douglass' July Fourth Oration
Ladies Anti-Slavery Society
Rochester, NY
1852
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers
of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave
men. They were great men, too < great enough to give frame to a great age.
It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of
truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not,
certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great
deeds with less than admiration. 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....
...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I
called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do
with your national independence? Are the great principles of political
freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of
Independence, extended to us? 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! Then
would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there
so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and
dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such
priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice
to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude
had been torn from his limbs? I am not that 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. I say it with a sad
sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of
glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable
distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not
enjoyed in common.<The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and
independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The
sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and
death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. 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. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking
me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me
warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes,
towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty,
burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! 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. Yea! we wept
when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst
thereof. 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. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I
forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. 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! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday,
are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach
them. 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. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall
see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view.
Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine,
I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and
conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!
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.
America.is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds
herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and
bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is
outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the
constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to
call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command,
everything that serves to perpetuate slavery < the great sin and shame of
America! "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. Would you argue more, an denounce
less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much
more likely to succeed." But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing
to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue?
On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must
I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded
already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the
enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish
disobedience on the part of the slave. 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. What is this but the
acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible
being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. 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. 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. 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. 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 ciphering,
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 Christian's 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?
that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it.
Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for
Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as
a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of
the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day,
in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show
that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and
positively, negatively and affirmatively. 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 burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to
their mastcrs? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and
stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment
for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not
divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are
mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot
be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I
cannot. The time for such argument is passed.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing
argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear,
I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting
reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is
needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the
storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. 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? 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. 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 denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your
shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your
sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity,
are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a
thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There
is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody
than are the people of the 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....
...Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark
picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not
despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably
work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and
the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with
hope. 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. Nations do
not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No
nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in
the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when
such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could
formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity.
Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the
multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the
affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The
arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is
penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and
under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its
chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From
Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively
annihilated. -- Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are
distinctly heard on the other.
The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at
our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The
fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. No
abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself
from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must
be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven
garment. 'Ethiopia, shall, stretch. out her hand unto Ood." In the fervent
aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in
saying it:
God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o'er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th' oppress'd shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom's reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.
God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
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