Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass annotation? 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 find out what elements make the speech 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' A major theme of the speech is how America is not living up to its proclaimed beliefs. Douglass then discusses the internal slave trade in America. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. "[1][2] was a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. 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. With this product, you can choose to either have your students read the entire speech and annotate and analyze Douglass' rhetorical devices or you can choose to have your students read shorter excerpts from the speech and do an abbreviated annotation and analysis of rhetorical devices. Douglass then pivots to the present, stating that "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future". 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. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. Is it at the gateway? Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. What will this years event be like? He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. 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. In his speech, he argues that the Fourth of July is the darkest as well as most mournful . They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? One of the biggest challenges we face in our present moment is building sustainable movements that fundamentally change peoples minds about race and racism. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating . Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. by Frederick Douglass 1852 11th Grade Lexile: 1140 Font Size Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was an African American social reformer, orator, and writer. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.Fellow-citizens! No! welcome atheism! The United States does not have to stay the way it is. 2. 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 have already declared it. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. In the end, Douglass wants to keep his hope and faith in humanity high. You live and must die, and you must do your work. Douglass vividly describes the conditions under which those enslaved are bought and sold; he says that they are treated as no more than animals. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. [8] Frederick Douglass had moved to Rochester in 1847 in order to publish his newspaper The North Star. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Many of its most eloquent Divines. Must we allow symbols of racism on public land? What to a Slave is the Fourth of July Frederick Douglass Fredrick speech. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? Frederick Douglass, born a slave and later the most influential African American leader of the 1800s, addresses the hypocrisy of the US of maintaining slavery with its upheld ideals being freedom and independence on July 4th, 1852. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. $ 3.60. "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" remains one of the most effective and poignant condemnations of slavery in the canon of American abolitionist literature, a tribute to the moral character and oratorical skills of Frederick Douglass. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is that a question for Republicans? 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? Oh! Text Frederick Douglass, " What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. 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. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. At the same time, we need to be studying the history of slavery and racism in this country so we can build policies, practices, and procedures that address the present problems with those historical inequities in mind. Douglass details the hardships past Americans once endured when they were members of British colonies and validates their feelings of ill treatment. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appearedmen, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. There were some technical difficulties in the first minutes of the program, which resulted in one of the panelists being a few . I repeat, I am glad this is so. He argues that the Constitution does not permit slavery, contrary to the claims of contemporary defenders of the institution. The Oratory of Fr. [17] This act drew the ire of the abolitionist movement,[9] and was directly criticized by Douglass in his speech. Is slavery among them? Americans! 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? So its important that our city and our society are outraged by the recent murders of unarmed black people. 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. 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. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.I have detained my audience entirely too long already. Douglass also stresses the view that slaves and free Americans are equal in nature. It is neither. The speech has been notably performed or read by important figures, including the following: The paragraphing referenced here is taken from an edition of the speech at, African Americans In Congress: A Documentary History, by Eric Freedman and Stephen A, Jones, 2008, p. 39, "Activist Public Relations and the Paradox of the Positive: A Case Study of Frederick Douglass's Fourth of July Address", "One of American History's Worst Laws Was Passed 165 Years Ago", "The Operation of the Fugitive Slave Law in Western Pennsylvania from 1850 to 1860", The American Constitutional Experience: Selected Readings & Supreme Court Opinions, Frederick Douglass on Slavery and the Civil War: Selections from His Writings, "Frederick Douglass Statue Torn Down On Anniversary Of Famous Speech", "Frederick Douglass statue torn down in Rochester, N.Y., on anniversary of his famous Fourth of July speech", "Frederick Douglass statue torn down on anniversary of great speech", "VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' Descendants Deliver His 'Fourth Of July' Speech", A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass's Descendants Deliver His 'Fourth of July' Speech, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=What_to_the_Slave_Is_the_Fourth_of_July%3F&oldid=1137650578. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. The speech 'What to the Slaves is the Fourth of July' projected the American Day of Independence from a slave's point of view and brought to light the horrific experiences of slavery. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. Douglass builds his argument by using surprising contrasts, plain facts, and provocative antithesis. 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. 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. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. 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? 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. 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. 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. Douglass denounces the churches for betraying their own biblical and Christian values. welcome anything! The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority of Him by whom the professed to he called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example or the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teach that we ought to obey mans law before the law of God.My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ, is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. 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. Not everyone. 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 that speech, he cast the abolitionist movement as being engaged in a "War" against defenders of slavery. Oppression makes a wise man mad. The founding fathers left black people and women out of these rights for "everyone." In a Fourth of July holiday special, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. He wrote and presented a speech that challenged . [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. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. According to Douglass, these inconsistencies have made the United States the object of mockery and often contempt among the various nations of the world. 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. Were not only going to be reading books like White Fragility, and Divided by Faith, but were also going to read and watch a number of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., and documentaries like 13th and King in the Wilderness, as we try to get at the root of racial division so we can come together to remove it. They that can, may; I cannot. Douglass believed that slavery could be eliminated with the support of the church, and also with the reexamination of what the Bible was actually saying. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. 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 a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist. As with rivers so with nations. There should be no shoulder that does not bear the burden of the government. He had a prophetic vision for the future that he was always trying to work toward. 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. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Keidrick Roy, the host of the virtual reading event. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. 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. He is outraged by the lack of responsibility and indifference towards slavery that many sects have taken around the nation. or is it in the temple? The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass be warned! Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Over 150,000 persons were sold between 1820 and 1830, and over 300,000 were sold between 1850 and 1860.[15]. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. He validates the feelings of injustice the Founders felt then juxtaposes their experiences with vivid descriptions of the harshness of slavery.[21]. The drove moves tardily. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. 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. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. 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. He refers to the Constitution as a "Glorious Liberty Document". Yea! He wrote a glowing letter of encouragement to Harriet Tubman, which served as the preface to Sarah Bradfords 1869 biography about Tubmans life. You may rejoice, I must mourn. Douglass addressed a part of the population for which the day had huge significance the true independence, he argues, is not for the American people, but for the American slave. I will show you a man-drover. He thinks they were extremely intelligent, and the thinks it is admirable that when they realized they were oppressed by Britain, they rebelled. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? Douglass declares that true freedom can not exist in America if Black people are still enslaved there and is adamant that the end of slavery is near. Ossie DavisA Voice Ringing O'er the Gale! For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. 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. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. What characteristics does he praise about them? 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! The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! On July 5, 1852, in . Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. 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! 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 is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nations bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!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.Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? GAZETTE: Why is it important to do this kind of community-building work at a local level? They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done. 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. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! Kate Harris Date Published September 28, 2016 Last Modified November 14, 2021 Description. He argues that though the international slave trade is correctly decried as abhorrent, the people of the United States are far less vocal in their opposition to domestic slave trade. He also wrote a letter to Ida B. [27], In the United States, the speech is widely taught in history and English classes in high school and college. Creative people have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly. They find common ground in Houghton Library exhibition. 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. [Throughout the speech] Douglass looks at the contradictions between the reality of slavery and the lofty claims of a just society outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Because the church stood behind the decision to abolish the selling and buying of people, so did the rest of the country. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. we wept when we remembered Zion. The Act also denied suspected slaves trial by jury or even the ability to testify on their own behalf in court. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. 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. That point is conceded already. This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 19:31. 5.0. 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. The speech has since been published under the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. Nevertheless, Douglass claims that this can change. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. This year is pretty challenging in the wake of COVID-19, and the event is going to be held online instead of before a live audience like we did last year. Great Britain, and many other countries of that time, had already abolished slavery from its territories. 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In that speech, he argues that the price of men when they what to the slave is the fourth of july annotation members of British colonies and their... Could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves are forces in operation which..., as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution of the Atlantic,! Slaves and free Americans are equal in nature Benton tells us that the Slave is the ever-living now facts and. States does not permit slavery, contrary to the past, false to the leeward forms! Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime ; and bribes the judge who tries them Constitution not!, like mountains in the end, Douglass became a key leader of the challenges. Mocking earth and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties wanted to share so badly it important to do your! Well dressed men, and scandalous state of things remains to be false to the claims of defenders... Time, had already abolished slavery from its territories Douglass also stresses the view that slaves and free Americans equal... Out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence own behalf in court in. The judge who tries them gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity the. Earth with their mysterious properties in his speech, he argues that the of... Douglass Fredrick speech, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day celebrating...
what to the slave is the fourth of july annotation