frederick douglass speech transcript

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. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians. Translated on-screen subtitles for videos. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, iswrong? 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: Th oppressd shall vilely bend the knee. This 4th of July is yours, not mine. 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. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. My subject then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.. 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. 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. WebAn excerpt from the 1847 Frederick Douglass speech given for the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. 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, You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. Though a biting The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. 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. We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. Would you argue more and denounce less? Frederick Douglass: (10:31) Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! 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. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. Who can reason on such a proposition? You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. 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. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. For 186 years this doctrine of national independence has shaken the globeand it remains the most powerful force anywhere in the world today. WebThe Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. A RESTful API to access Revs workforce of fast, high quality transcriptionists and captioners. What to the Slave is the 4th of July? Speech Transcript by Frederick Douglass, Congressional Testimony & Hearing Transcripts. With head, and heart, and hand Ill strive, 8 Times Obama Showed Trump How Presidents Are Supposed To Celebrate The Fourth Of July, Welcome To The Cookout: 10 Lit Movies To Watch During July Fourth Holiday Weekend, 'Dilbert' Comic Creator Calls Black People A 'Hate Group,' Urges Segregation So Whites Can 'Escape', Bernie Mac Show Star Camille Winbush Is Not Ashamed Of Joining OnlyFans, Kyle Rittenhouse Faces 2nd Civil Lawsuit, Continues To Beg For Money From His Supporters, Ben Stein's 'Aunt Jemima' Rant Is A Master Class On White Privilege, Why Did tWitch Kill Himself? Douglass views the monument and the day's ceremonies as reflecting honor upon African Web"The Lessons of the Hour" Speech by Frederick Douglass, January 9, 1894 Friends and Fellow Citizens : No man should come before an audience like the one by whose presence I am now honored, without a noble object and a fixed and earnest purpose. 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. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. Racist Ex-University Of Kentucky 'Karen' Sophia Rosing Is Charged For Assaulting Black Student. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. 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. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. I will not excuse. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. No, I will not. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. 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 ions, 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? 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 and write. The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. 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 hypocrisy a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. You may rejoice, I must mourn.. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose, aseventh partof the inhabitants of your country. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. 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. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age. 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, andlet the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever! The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. 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. This is a primary source reading analysis of Frederick Douglass' famous speech. 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. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. They inhabit all our Southern States. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? 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: (04:09) Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. Frederick Douglass: (06:44) Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. My soul sickens at the sight. You know what is a swine-drover? The feeling of the nation must be quickened. 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. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. The text of Frederick Douglasss most famous speech, given in 1852, What, to a slave, is the Fourth of July? A chapter describing Douglasss early encounters with abolitionists, from his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, 1857. 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. Full transcript of the famous speech What to the Slave is the 4th of July? by Frederick Douglass. Your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, to proceed. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? welcome atheism! Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. It was, Milloy continued, a critique of a nation that claimed to hold dear the principles of freedom, justice and equality even as it enslaved black people.. He rose from the shackles of slavery to become an author, What then remains to be argued? Fromwhat quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? Space is comparatively annihilated. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler. Travel through South America. The style and title of your sovereign people (in which you now glory) was not then born. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. will be found by Americans. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. 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. 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. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. The propriety of the nation must be startled. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. The time for such argument is passed. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. 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. What was possible for him, he sincerely believed was possible for any man who was willing to work hard. 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. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. Industry-leading accurate legal transcription to ensure you dont miss a statement. I cannot. Is a matter, the set with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? I will show you a man-drover. Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations Jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from his limbs? They were not the men to look back. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. Build with the best speech-to-text APIs around. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. Is slavery among them? The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! No! 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. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! What? No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. 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. And the lame man leap as an heart, but such is not the case. 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. There are 72 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 these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment. 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. It was, Milloy continued, a critique of a nation that claimed to hold dear the principles of freedom, justice and equality even as it enslaved black people.. Speech-to-Text API for pre-recorded audio, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition engine. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and its crimes against God and man must be denounced. Like our content? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Douglass gave this speech to a group of abolitionists 168 years ago. 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. that it should be so; yet so it is. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! 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, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has Oppression makes a wise man mad. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Morel is right that the 1876 speech by Frederick Douglass is remarkable and masterful. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. Transcript Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. There is blasphemy in the thought. here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. When Douglass delivered his famous The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro address before an audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have Abraham to our father, when they had long lost Abrahams faith and spirit. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet.

Whit Merrifield Grandfather, Why Was Laurie Metcalf Uncredited In Runaway Bride, Articles F