what to the slave is the fourth of july annotation

You may rejoice, I must mourn. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. 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. [26] After the Civil War, Douglass said that "we" had achieved a great thing by gaining American independence during the American Revolutionary War, though he said it was not as great as what was achieved by the Civil War. It is neither. There were some technical difficulties in the first minutes of the program, which resulted in one of the panelists being a few . 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. 2. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to. Kate Harris Date Published September 28, 2016 Last Modified November 14, 2021 Description. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, Mason and Dixons line has been obliterated, Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cumin. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. 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.In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft-interred with their bones. He talks about how Americans are proud of their country and their religion and how they rejoice in the name of freedom and liberty and yet they do not offer those things to millions of their country's residents. [3] In the address, Douglass states that positive statements about American values, such as liberty, citizenship, and freedom, were an offense to the enslaved population of the United States because they lacked those rights. speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. 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. This act forced citizens to report people who had escaped their enslavement and escaped to a free state, under punishment of a fine or imprisonment. 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! 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 everyone. The anti-slavery movement there was 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 or a hostile position towards that movement. I will not. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. He can bring no witnesses for himself. one of the most important speeches of the 19th century? 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. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. You know what is a swine-drover? You have already declared it. He argues that the Constitution does not permit slavery, contrary to the claims of contemporary defenders of the institution. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act had passed Congress as part of the broader Compromise of 1850. So its important that our city and our society are outraged by the recent murders of unarmed black people. According to Douglass, these inconsistencies have made the United States the object of mockery and often contempt among the various nations of the world. True Christians, according to Douglass, should not stand idly by while the rights and liberty of others are stripped away. Nevertheless, Douglass claims that this can change. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.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 bum their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating . 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. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? What will this years event be like? Yea! The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. 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. [7], The Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1851. You may rejoice, I must mourn. This truth is not a doubtful one. "Meaning of the Fourth of July to a Negro" by Bridget Durham The Fourth of July is a day of celebration for many Americans because on July 4th, 1776, America declared independence from Britain and said that everyone was free under the US government, right? Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. [13] Although the import of people directly from Africa had been banned in 1807,[14] the domestic slave trade, still legal, was thriving. Great Britain, and many other countries of that time, had already abolished slavery from its territories. There is blasphemy in the thought. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist. Nobody doubts it. As the project scholar, my role is to advise the process as it rolls out, to give a talk that provides contemporary and historical context and to facilitate the community discussion around the speech against the backdrop of other relevant issues. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. 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. 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. Is slavery among them? GAZETTE: This is your second year as host of Reading Frederick Douglass Together in Somerville. 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. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! we wept when we remembered Zion. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. 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! He faults America for utter hypocrisy and betrayal of those values in maintaining the institution of slavery. Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, on July. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? [8] Frederick Douglass had moved to Rochester in 1847 in order to publish his newspaper The North Star. [28][29] The head of the organization responsible for the memorial speculated that it was vandalized in response to the removal of Confederate monuments in the wake of the George Floyd protests.[30]. Oppression makes a wise man mad. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. Frederick Douglass, a well-known Black writer, orator, and abolitionist was asked to address an anti-slavery group on the July 4 holiday in 1852. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Creative people have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly. They find common ground in Houghton Library exhibition. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. GAZETTE: What is something you have discovered about Douglass while researching this speech and his work more broadly that people might be surprised to learn? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appearedmen, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. 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. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. 5.0. or is it in the temple? 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. The program, which resulted in one of the living God program which... Men guilty of no crime [ 7 ], the Fugitive slave Act had passed Congress as of... Make it useful to the claims of gratitude, prompt you to no crime let right! 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