What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it. Knowledge is becoming more readily available, Douglass said, and soon the American people will open their eyes to the atrocities they have been inflicting on their fellow Americans. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 19:31. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. one of the most important speeches of the 19th century? In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. In this collection, students will review the life of Frederick Douglass and learn about one of his most famous speeches, "The Meaning of Fourth of July for the Negro" (it is also commonly referred to as "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July). These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. Douglass equates this to being worse than many other things that are banned, in particular, books and plays that are banned for infidelity. The well-known speech was previously known as The Meaning of July the Fourth for the Negro. Later, the speech was re-titled based on Douglasss question, What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?. Not everyone. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. 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. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. 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. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. be warned! These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. 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. In his speech, he argues that the Fourth of July is the darkest as well as most mournful . The manhood of the slave is conceded. If youre not a person of color, its one thing to go to a couple of events or protests, or to read a few articles and move on. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appearedmen, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. 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. 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. Nobody doubts it. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. The country can progress like it has before, transforming from being a colony of a far-away king to an independent nation. With this product, you can choose to either have your students read the entire speech and annotate and analyze Douglass' rhetorical devices or you can choose to have your students read shorter excerpts from the speech and do an abbreviated annotation and analysis of rhetorical devices. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. In an 1868 speech, he said, No man should be excluded from the government on the basis of his color, no woman on account of her sex. What characteristics does he praise about them? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. 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. your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery." Douglass spends the next part of his speech pre-empting some of the arguments . Panel on dispossession of African Americans says burying truth keeps Black Americans dispossessed, Legal scholar and historian puts the push to remove Confederate statues in context, Members of the community share memories, plans, hopes for the holiday, Quantum computing simulation reveals possible wormhole-like dynamics. Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. Douglass declares that true freedom can not exist in America if Black people are still enslaved there and is adamant that the end of slavery is near. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. [5] Many copies of one section of it, beginning in paragraph 32, have been circulated online. I hold that every American citizen has a fight 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. welcome anything! They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. Essentially, Douglass criticizes his audience's pride for a nation that claims to value freedom though it is composed of people who continuously commit atrocities against Blacks. I will show you a man-drover. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. The speech notes the contradiction of the national ethos of United States and the way enslaved persons are treated. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Assignment in book chapter School Alief Early College High School Course English language and literature (ELL2002) Uploaded by God Academic year2021/2022 Helpful? 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. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. 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. We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. The 4th of July Address, delivered in Corinthian Hall, by Frederick Douglass, is published on good paper, and makes a neat pamphlet of forty pages. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Without this fight, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. we wept when we remembered Zion. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will use the severest language I can command; 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.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. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal!And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. 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. He can bring no witnesses for himself. One small step toward understanding gravity, Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? 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! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" remains one of the most effective and poignant condemnations of slavery in the canon of American abolitionist literature, a tribute to the moral character and oratorical skills of Frederick Douglass. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisya thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. (1982). The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. 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. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. True Christians, according to Douglass, should not stand idly by while the rights and liberty of others are stripped away. 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. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. [17] This act drew the ire of the abolitionist movement,[9] and was directly criticized by Douglass in his speech. Follow the drove to New Orleans. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more. That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. 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