How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. 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. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, andthugs. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. Calculate how much it costs to transcribe, caption, or subtitle your content. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. What have I, or those I represent to do with your national independence. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. As with rivers so with nations. Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. be warned! Extend your content reach and maximize your engagement rates. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. 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. I lived on Philpot Street, Fells Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent Frederick Douglass Read the full transcript here. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? That point is conceded already. 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. here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. 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. Is it at the gateway? And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Go search where you will. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you. Fellow-citizens! 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. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. Under Title 17 U.S.C. Frederick Douglass: (04:09) 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? The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. Oppression makes a wise man mad. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? This 4th of July is yours, not mine. The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? At a time like this, scorching irony not convincing argument is needed. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. 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. Frederick Douglass: (10:31) There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. 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! This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. 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. At the time of the delivery of this speech, Douglass had been living in Rochester, New York for several years editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper. He was invited to give a fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. In the early 1850s, tensions over slavery were high across the county. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of. 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. Industry-leading accurate legal transcription to ensure you dont miss a statement. You could instruct me in regard to them. They inhabit all our Southern States. A RESTful API to access Revs workforce of fast, high quality transcriptionists and captioners. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. 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. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. We are called upon to prove that we are men. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. I must mourn. Youmay rejoice,Imust mourn. Yea! What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The feeling of the nation must be quickened. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. 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. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. 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. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? I repeat, I am glad this is so. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. 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 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. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow., The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. 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. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.