Then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful? I cannot. 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? You could instruct me in regard to them. Descendants of Frederick Douglass read excerpts from one of his most famous speeches: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Oppression makes a wise man mad. Calculate how much it costs to transcribe, caption, or subtitle your content. 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? It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. Yet they persevered. The most accurate AI-powered transcription on the market. 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. The slave holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. 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. Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. 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. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. WebIn the late 1860sat a moment of great hope for the promise of equality under the lawthe famed orator and once-enslaved abolitionist Frederick Douglass took his Our Composite Nation speech on the road to argue for a plural American democracy. The Bible addresses all such persons as scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe ofmint, anise,andcumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. Its deeply moving to hear Douglass defend the honor of Black soldiers in his 1863 speech, The Proclamation And a Negro Army, read by Colman Domingo, while his final speech, 1894s Lessons of the Hour, lays out the crucial steps toward achieving equality that have yet to be followed today.The actor selected to read these words is Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. 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! Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. Americans! For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. At a time like this, scorching irony not convincing argument is needed. We thank you for taking the time to watch this community reading of Frederick Douglasss What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Source: Blight, David. On July 5, 1852, eminent African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered a brilliant speech to nearly six hundred people filling Rochester, New Yorks Corinthian Hall, as organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. 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. I am not that man. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who The message of Frederick Douglasss 1852 speech on the contradiction of Americas just ideals and unjust realities endures. 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. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. 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! By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. I will not excuse. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! 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 cyphering, 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 Christians God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men! From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. "The Lessons of the Hour" Speech by Frederick Douglass WebFrederick Douglass, Fifth of July speech (1852) O! The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. Full transcript of the famous speech What to the Slave is the 4th of July? by Frederick Douglass. As with rivers so with nations. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. welcome atheism! I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine! Web" 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 They were not the men to look back. Speech-to-Text API for pre-recorded audio, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition engine. Frederick Douglass What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. 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. 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. 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 Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. The Fugitive SlaveLawmakes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. Frederick Douglass: (06:03) 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! will be found by Americans. 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? See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. 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. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. He can bring no witnesses for himself. What then remains to be argued? I am not included within the pales of this glorious anniversary. The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! 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. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. For 186 years this doctrine of national independence has shaken the globeand it remains the most powerful force anywhere in the world today. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. 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, In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? 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. 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. 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. How unlike the politicians of an hour! 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 be warned! 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. Frederick Douglass: (02:13) Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground formen. But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. 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. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. I have detained my audience entirely too long already. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. Travel through South America. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. Its quite a remarkable speech as Douglass in a way reenacts his own journey in appreciation for the work that Lincoln did, not just for blacks, but for whites in this country. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" Speech Transcript Douglass gave this speech to a group of abolitionists 168 years ago. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. WebBoth anniversaries remind us that the fight for independence and equality did not end in the 18th century - a theme highlighted in Douglass speech. 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. 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. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. 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. Discover why Rev is the #1 speech-to-text service in the world. Where these are, man is not sacred. 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. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. No! WebOn July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Douglass was a powerful That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. 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, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. They inhabit all our Southern States. The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. Frederick Douglass speech - PBS when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. 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. Morel is right that the 1876 speech by Frederick Douglass is remarkable and masterful. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. WATCH VIDEO: Should Black Americans Celebrate Independence Day? 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. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. 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. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. The country was poor in the munitions of war. 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. 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. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. We are called upon to prove that we are men. 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! Towards the end of 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. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Celebrating Frederick Douglass through Transcription 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. 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 How should I look today, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? You may rejoice, I must mourn.. 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. VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. Convert your audio or video into 99% accurate text by a professional. Would you argue more and denounce less? Fellow-citizens! Frederick Douglass: (10:31) Like our content? With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. Is it not astonishing that while we are plowing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metal 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 we are engaged in all the enterprises, common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planting, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all confessing and worshiping the Christian God and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave. Our Composite Nation: Frederick Douglass America The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. Oh! The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Is that a question for Republicans? It is neither. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. 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 know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. 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 take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. 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. weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers.