It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried mens souls. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moments warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. 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. Translated on-screen subtitles for videos. Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? Full transcript of the famous speech What to the Slave is the 4th of July? by Frederick Douglass. Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? Fellow-citizens! What to the American slave is your 4th of July? Yea! You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. 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! Fair use is permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. All Rights Reserved. Frederick Douglass The slave holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The country was poor in the munitions of war. Frederick Douglass Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. Oh! Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. be warned! You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the meretoolsand body-guardsof the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. Become a freelancer and work on your own terms. 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. I hold that every American citizen has a right 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. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! 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 palpablebribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a mans liberty,hear only his accusers! No! Speech My soul sickens at the sight. 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.. 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. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout We have Washington toour father. Alas! 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. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. 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. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slaves point of view. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. I will show you a man-drover. The din of business, too, is hushed. Speech They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. will be found by Americans. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! Morel is right that the 1876 speech by Frederick Douglass is remarkable and masterful. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. Yea! Frederick Douglass: (01:08) The manhood of the slave is conceded. Frederick Douglass: (07:35) To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. 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. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. 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. Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) 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. 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? Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. Frederick Douglass I will not excuse. Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The time for such argument is passed. WebIn December 1860, the great American orator and former slave Frederick Douglass delivered one of his finest speeches, A Plea for Free Speech in Boston. In it, he boldly declared that liberty is meaningless where the right to utter ones thoughts and But I admit, where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued. At the time of the delivery of this speech, Douglass had been living in Rochester, New York for several years editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper. He was invited to give a fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. In the early 1850s, tensions over slavery were high across the county. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. 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. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. Your cause would be much more likely to succeed. Celebrating Frederick Douglass through Transcription They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. 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. The style and title of your sovereign people (in which you now glory) was not then born. The anti-slavery movementtherewas not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Industry-leading accurate legal transcription to ensure you dont miss a statement. 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. 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. What to the Slave is the 4th of July? Speech Transcript by Frederick Douglass, Congressional Testimony & Hearing Transcripts. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! 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. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Speech Yet they persevered. Transcripts & captions for a better media workflow. 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. You could instruct me in regard to them. I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. I will not equivocate. What, to the American Slave, Is Your 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. I have detained my audience entirely too long already. 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. Frederick Douglass speech - PBS A Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1860) | Constitution Center Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. Speech-to-Text API for pre-recorded audio, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition engine. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Who can reason on such a proposition? They inhabit all our Southern States. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. To him, your celebration is a sham, your boasted Liberty, an unholy license, your national greatness, swelling vanity. 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! By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem the Fugitive Slave Law as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, andnota vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. I cannot. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. You have no right to enjoy a childs share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. 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. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent And the lame man leap as an heart, but such is not the case. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. There is not a nation of the earth, guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. They, that can, may. Towards the end of They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. 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. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. 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. We are called upon to prove that we are men. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. The Best Speech-to-Text Solution for Your Business Learn how Rev fits into your businesses workflow. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy.
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