frederick douglass speech transcript frederick douglass speech transcript

In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. Is it at the gateway? There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. 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. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. Did this law concern the mint, anise, and cumin abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? The Fugitive SlaveLawmakes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. 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. 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. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slaves redemption from his chains. The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. 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. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. This is esteemed by some as a national trait perhaps a national weakness. Section 107, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. Yea! Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, 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 4th of July is the first great fact in your nations history the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! 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. 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. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his body? Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. 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. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror. Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. 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. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852 . There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. I am not that man. 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. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Travel through South America. Its the news, without the news. 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.. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an Independence Day celebration organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. 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. Speech Transcript 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! 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. 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. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has 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, What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? 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. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. Frederick Douglass: (03:37) 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. WebA speech celebrating both Lincoln and African Americans freedom wrought by Lincoln. I am not included within the pales of this glorious anniversary. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. 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 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 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. You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. 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. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. They inhabit all our Southern States. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. The document is in the form of a Google Docs so it has a translation tool, dictionary, and voice to text. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. 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. Frederick Douglass's, What To the Slave Is the Fourth of I will use the severest language I can command. This Fourth [of] July isyours, notmine. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! 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 WATCH VIDEO: Should Black Americans Celebrate Independence Day? Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. 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. 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. I will show you a man-drover. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. 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. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. 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. Build with the best speech-to-text APIs around. 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. But, such is not the state of the case. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It is neither. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. Extend your content reach and maximize your engagement rates. You profess to believe that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth, and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own.