what to the slave is the fourth of july annotation

But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. Douglass then returns to the topic of the founding of the United States. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. He took action to raise the voices of others and to aid their work on the national stage, especially that of two Black women in the last half of the 19th century. To honor Black History Month, as an introduction or review of rhetorical appeals and devices, or as a speech exemplar, this Frederick Douglass "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" rhetoric activity is a fabulous addition to any lesson. in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States. 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. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth! To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass 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. Must we allow symbols of racism on public land? 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. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. PDF. The time was when such could be done. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. The speech has since been published under the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. 2. [8] Frederick Douglass had moved to Rochester in 1847 in order to publish his newspaper The North Star. 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! Follow the drove to New Orleans. 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. In the second part of the speech, Douglass turns to the present and his own feelings about the 4th of July . During the Civil War, Douglass said that since Massachusetts had been the first state to join the Patriot cause during the American Revolutionary War, black men should go to Massachusetts to enlist in the Union Army. 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. Is that a question for Republicans? [7], The Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1851. Table of Contents. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act had passed Congress as part of the broader Compromise of 1850. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. 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. Yea! To find out what elements make the speech 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. The time for such argument is passed.At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. The audience must fulfill what the founders of the country advocated. 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. 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. Douglass equates this to being worse than many other things that are banned, in particular, books and plays that are banned for infidelity. Douglass' speech came just 11 years before Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation hitting a poignant point in American history through his targeting of the slave as a crucial figure in desperate need of independence. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? 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. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. He refers to the Constitution as a "Glorious Liberty Document". 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. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating . The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. The manhood of the slave is conceded. Douglass, Frederick, ed. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass annotation? 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. This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 19:31. They that can, may; I cannot. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. 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. weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? [19]. 2003. ROY: The better we get to know the people that we live with, that we work around, that we see at the coffee shop, and the more we talk about these important racial issues with one another, the easier it will be to heal our divided communities. I will not. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. He praises them because they were great men. 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. No! Before you read the speech you can follow these links to learn more about Douglass's life and the evolution of his thought in this period. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slaverythe great sin and shame of America! They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. The speech notes the contradiction of the national ethos of United States and the way enslaved persons are treated. 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 mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. As with rivers so with nations. I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. On 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 orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? On July 5, 1852, in . 00 Comments Please sign inor registerto post comments. 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.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.Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Is it at the gateway? But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea. This country need light to be false to the foreign slave-trade ) the internal Slave trade dead the. 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