What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? At the same time, we need to be studying the history of slavery and racism in this country so we can build policies, practices, and procedures that address the present problems with those historical inequities in mind. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass-- a former American slave, abolitionist leader and adroit speaker-- spoke in Rochester, New York about the affectation of celebrating independence. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? Is slavery among them? The speech 'What to the Slaves is the Fourth of July' projected the American Day of Independence from a slave's point of view and brought to light the horrific experiences of slavery. 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! 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. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. [17] This act drew the ire of the abolitionist movement,[9] and was directly criticized by Douglass in his speech. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! 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. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. [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]. I am not that man. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. 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. [5] Many copies of one section of it, beginning in paragraph 32, have been circulated online. 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. I repeat, I am glad this is so. 5.0. welcome anything! They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? 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. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. 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. 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. 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. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery." Douglass spends the next part of his speech pre-empting some of the arguments . 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. Americans! O! we wept when we remembered Zion. be warned! or is it in the temple? He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? 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.. 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. we wept when we remembered Zion. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. 4th period Mrs. Landrew Fredrick Douglass Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. Douglass argues that religion is the center of the problem but also the main solution to it. Without this fight, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. [20]:344. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? 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. Easel Activity. 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. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. The audience must fulfill what the founders of the country advocated. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? I will not. Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. 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! 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. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future, Douglass said. The time for such argument is passed.At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Cling to this daycling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight, Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline, With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. 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. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. True Christians, according to Douglass, should not stand idly by while the rights and liberty of others are stripped away. 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. In this respect, Douglass's views converged with that of Abraham Lincoln's[25] in that those politicians who were saying that the Constitution was a justification for their beliefs in regard to slavery were doing so dishonestly. 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. 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. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act had passed Congress as part of the broader Compromise of 1850. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery. 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. In a Fourth of July holiday special, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. He wrote and presented a speech that challenged . The country can progress like it has before, transforming from being a colony of a far-away king to an independent nation. Douglass, Frederick, ed. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? 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. 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. GAZETTE: This is your second year as host of Reading Frederick Douglass Together in Somerville. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. 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. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? The manhood of the slave is conceded. 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. Yea! That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. 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. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nations historythe very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 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. 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! A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. 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. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. 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. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! Space is comparatively annihilated. 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. Were not only going to be reading books like White Fragility, and Divided by Faith, but were also going to read and watch a number of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., and documentaries like 13th and King in the Wilderness, as we try to get at the root of racial division so we can come together to remove it. The speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! Stauffer, John. 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! The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. Random House. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? 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? Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. But now is the time, the important time. 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". 2. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! In spite of his praise of the Founding Fathers, he maintains that slaves owe nothing to and have no positive feelings towards the founding of the United States. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. 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. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.What, then, remains to be argued? 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! Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. 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. 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. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. The 'Address' may be had at this office, price ten cents, a single copy, or six dollars per hundred. [19]. [5] American studies professor Andrew S. Bibby argues that because many of the editions produced for educational use are abridged, they often misrepresent Douglass's original through omission or editorial focus. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. 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. We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. 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. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. [Under the Act] it became illegal not to arrest and return runaway slaves. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appearedmen, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. The fiat of the Almighty, Let there be Light, has not yet spent its force. My soul sickens at the sight. Douglass equates this to being worse than many other things that are banned, in particular, books and plays that are banned for infidelity. Is it at the gateway? How digital misinformation may keep you from a good nights sleep, Study finds surgical patients with addiction issues may be at greater risk for complications, including sudden cardiac death after anesthesia, Khalil Gibran Muhammad says College Board needs to stand firm behind curriculum, Chief counsel of respected mid-70s Senate inquiry into improper federal investigations says credibility of oversight function at stake, 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, By Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite Harvard Staff Writer, Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? in 1852, drawing parallels between the Revolutionary War and the fight to abolish slavery. The founding fathers left black people and women out of these rights for "everyone." The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Oppression makes a wise man mad. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. But we also need to invest as a city and as a society into reading and learning more about the present realities of oppressed peoples. 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. During the 1850's, the Fourth of July served as a reminder of the many horrors and injustices in the world. 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. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. 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!Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. You have already declared it. weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. Wells, which was incorporated into the preface of her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.. They that can, may; I cannot. Douglass builds his argument by using surprising contrasts, plain facts, and provocative antithesis. 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. 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. Is slavery among them? 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. in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! He faults America for utter hypocrisy and betrayal of those values in maintaining the institution of slavery. Oh! 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. He praises them because they were great men. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a mans liberty, hear only his accusers!In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. 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? Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Keidrick Roy, the host of the virtual reading event. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass annotation? 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what to the slave is the fourth of july annotation