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by Frederick Douglass
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, O
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 Americans, 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
masters? 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 God." 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!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.
God speed the
hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant's presence cower;
But to all manhood's stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his Prison-house, to thrall
Go forth.
Until that year,
day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I'll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive --
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.
The Life and
Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume II
Pre-Civil War Decade 1850-1860
Philip S. Foner
International Publishers Co., Inc., New York, 1950
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