They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. Mark them! The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Calculate how much it costs to transcribe, caption, or subtitle your content. 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. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. welcome atheism! 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. 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. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? 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. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! 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. No! For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? 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! 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. You live and must die, and you must do your work. WebIn this speech, Frederick Douglass reflected on how the outpouring of joy at the conclusion of the Civil War turned to mourning with Lincolns assassination. The time was when such could be done. He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, newspaper publisher, and respected abolitionist. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic. And the lame man leap as an heart, but such is not the case. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow., The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. I am not that man. My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. Try Rev and save time transcribing, captioning, and subtitling. 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 is esteemed by some as a national trait perhaps a national weakness. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. 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. 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! His death, according to Douglass was not only tragic, but also prevented recently freed slaves and African Americans from gaining the ear of wise and well-intentioned leader. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. Full transcript of the famous speech What to the Slave is the 4th of July? by Frederick Douglass. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. But, such is not the state of the case. Frederick Douglass: (02:57) They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. Frederick Douglass: (05:02) Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? 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. 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. 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 Your President, your Secretary of State, ourlords,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. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. 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. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. No, I will not. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an Independence Day celebration organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. Standing here identified with the American bondsmen, making his wrongs mine. 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? VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. 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? With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you. The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. 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. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. we wept when we remembered Zion. Suicide Note Revealed After Shocking Death, Mississippi Cops Beat, Waterboarded Handcuffed Black Men, Shot 1 For Dating White Women': Lawyers, Indicted! Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. Extend your content reach and maximize your engagement rates. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his body? The slave holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 as an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. Before you read the speech you can follow these links to learn more about Douglasss life and the evolution of his thought in this period. Short bio of Frederick Douglass The Frederick Douglass Papers Library of Congress Speech-to-Text live streaming for live captions, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition API. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. 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 and question and to denounce with all the emphasis I can command everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. 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. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and its crimes against God and man must be denounced. WebFrederick Douglass speech Historical Document "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" 1852 Resource Bank Contents Click here for the text of this historical document. 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. It is neither. 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 propriety of the nation must be startled. I am not included within the pales of this glorious anniversary. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation Babylon, whose crimes towering up to heaven with thrown down by the breadth of the almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin. Easily integrate Rev using our robust APIs to start building your product quickly. It is not that pure and undefiled religion which is from above, and which is first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits,without partiality, and without hypocrisy. But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains,stay there; and to the oppressor,oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man.
White Roses And Eucalyptus Bridal Bouquet, Joel Osteen House Pictures, Glenbrook South High School Famous Alumni, Articles F