Douglass builds his argument by using surprising contrasts, plain facts, and provocative antithesis. 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. He had delivered a series of seven lectures about slavery there in the winter of 185051. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. Not everyone. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation's historythe very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. . It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. Another remarkable thing about Douglass is that he was an early champion of voting rights for women. [16] Additionally, it awarded $10 to a judge who sentenced an individual to return to enslavement, while awarding only $5 if the claim was dismissed. that he is the rightful owner of his own body? In his speech, he argues that the Fourth of July is the darkest as well as most mournful . What to the Slave is the Fourth of July | Historical Context The Colonial regime paved way for the transportation of slaves from different parts of the world, mostly from the African continent to work in southern states of America on cash crop plantations that generated a great source of income. was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. 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. Is it at the gateway? Douglass was a former slave of the 19th century and soon became a leader during the Abolitionist Movement. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. [13] Although the import of people directly from Africa had been banned in 1807,[14] the domestic slave trade, still legal, was thriving. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. 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. 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. PDF. [20]:345He also attempts to demonstrate the irony of their inability to sympathize with the Black people they oppressed in cruel ways that the forefathers they valorized never experienced. 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.For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. "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. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. The country can progress like it has before, transforming from being a colony of a far-away king to an independent nation. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. 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. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! dismay. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! I will not. Oppression makes a wise man mad. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Frederick Douglass sought not only to convince people of the wrongfulness of slavery but also to make abolition more acceptable to Northern whites. GAZETTE: What is the historical setting for this speech, and why did Douglass focus on the Fourth of July? Random House. 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. The 'Address' may be had at this office, price ten cents, a single copy, or six dollars per hundred. 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. ROY: Douglass wrote the speech in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which effectively extended the reach of slave power in the South throughout the rest of the country. Douglass equates this to being worse than many other things that are banned, in particular, books and plays that are banned for infidelity. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. During the 1850's, the Fourth of July served as a reminder of the many horrors and injustices in the world. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! 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. 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. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. 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. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. Many of its most eloquent Divines. we wept when we remembered Zion. 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 remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Douglass denounces the churches for betraying their own biblical and Christian values. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act had passed Congress as part of the broader Compromise of 1850. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? There is consolation in the thought that America is young. You live and must die, and you must do your work. 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. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. What characteristics does he praise about them? Creative people have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly. They find common ground in Houghton Library exhibition. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. 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. 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. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. 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. A major theme of the speech is how America is not living up to its proclaimed beliefs. 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! In a Fourth of July holiday special, we hear the words of Frederick Douglass. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried mens souls. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating . Space is comparatively annihilated. 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. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. This year is pretty challenging in the wake of COVID-19, and the event is going to be held online instead of before a live audience like we did last year. 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. 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. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. I am also hosting a summer reading and discussion series called Race, Fragility, and Anti-Racism through the Somerville Museum and the City on a Hill network of local churches. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Douglass, Frederick, ed. A self-taught man, he escaped from slavery and eventually became a leader in the abolitionist movement. Douglass then pivots to the present, stating that "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future". The speech has since been published under the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? ARI . [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]. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. $ 3.60. 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! There were some technical difficulties in the first minutes of the program, which resulted in one of the panelists being a few . In the end, Douglass wants to keep his hope and faith in humanity high. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. He refers to the Constitution as a "Glorious Liberty Document". 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. "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? Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. The Act also denied suspected slaves trial by jury or even the ability to testify on their own behalf in court. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? 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. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. More than 150 years later, Keidrick Roy, a doctoral student in American Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a U.S. Air Force veteran, will host a virtual community reading and discussion of the storied speech at the Somerville Museum on Thursday as part of the annual state-wide MassHumanities program Reading Frederick Douglass Together.. Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. Where these are, man is not sacred. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. The founding fathers left black people and women out of these rights for "everyone." Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! 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. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Products. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. "[1][2] 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 Society. 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. This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 19:31. There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose, a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.Fellow-citizens! ROY: The event that were doing in Somerville puts pressure on whitewashed conceptions of the Fourth of July, as many people to this day still view it as a celebration of American food, fireworks, and freedom. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. He thinks they were extremely intelligent, and the thinks it is admirable that when they realized they were oppressed by Britain, they rebelled. Summary: "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", otherwise known as "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," Frederick Douglassoutlines a careful argument against the institution of slavery and more specifically the Fugitive Slave Act. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating freedom. How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft-interred with their bones. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! 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. But the 1852 "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech remains the best known of his addresses on the occasion, especially as it became even more widely read in the late-20th century,. 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. 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. 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. Rhetorical Analysis Of Harvey Fourth Of July. 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. Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, on July. What is now known as the "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 as an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. 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. 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. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. Over 150,000 persons were sold between 1820 and 1830, and over 300,000 were sold between 1850 and 1860.[15]. 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. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? 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. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. 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. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. [10] Douglass had spoken at Corinthian Hall in the past. [Under the Act] it became illegal not to arrest and return runaway slaves. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. 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. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. Alison Drasner, the project coordinator for the Somerville Museum, teamed up with Dave Ortega at the Somerville Media Center to prerecord voices of 50 Somerville residents, including my 7-year-old daughter, Charlotte, to read sections of the speech. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. 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. Americans! According to Douglass, these inconsistencies have made the United States the object of mockery and often contempt among the various nations of the world. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. [4], Noted for its biting irony and bitter rhetoric, and acute textual analysis of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Christian Bible, the speech is among the most widely known of all of Douglass's writings. 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. He faults America for utter hypocrisy and betrayal of those values in maintaining the institution of slavery. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. He is outraged by the lack of responsibility and indifference towards slavery that many sects have taken around the nation. 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. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. Repetition Parallel structure ethos pathos Analogy Simile/Metaphor Rhetorical Question logos Part 2 - Slavery in America Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called uponto speak here today? Youll never experience a black hole, but Avi Loeb can help you imagine one, We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term., Level of cannabis use could determine post-op outcomes, Historian says Fla. dispute shows why AP class in African American studies is needed, Why Church Committee alums urged new House panel to avoid partisanship, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, Rewriting history to include all of it this time. 15 November's Documents in Detail webinar was about Frederick Douglass's What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, his oration delivered on 5 July 1862. 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. One of the parts of the speech that resonates with me the most is when Douglass says: What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? American slavery to arrest and return runaway slaves ) the internal slave trade ages ago swine for the that! Their memory, at least, so I believe are forces in operation, resulted... 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