It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. Your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless, your shouts of Liberty and equality, hallow mocked, your prayers and hymns your sermons and Thanksgivings with all your religious parade in solemnity are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, a thin veil to cover up crimes, which would disgrace a nation of savages. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. 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. You know what is a swine-drover? They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. 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 Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. Easily integrate Rev using our robust APIs to start building your product quickly. Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation? There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. The time for such argument is past. 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. 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. But now is the time, the important time. Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations Jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from his limbs? If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. I will not. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? You have already declared it. 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. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. 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. It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. Yet they persevered. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. Try Rev and save time transcribing, captioning, and subtitling. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most sacrilegious and shocking and would make me a reproach before God and the world. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. 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. The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. Fellow-citizens! The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. 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, Extend your content reach and maximize your engagement rates. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, iswrong? Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. Frederick Douglass: (02:57) I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. WebFrederick Douglass, Fifth of July speech (1852) O! Would you argue more and denounce less? Transcribe your audio files to find high-impact insights in minutes. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. What, then, remains to be argued? 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. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. When Douglass delivered his famous The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro address before an audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. 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. How unlike the politicians of an hour! Would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his body? The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. Cling to this day cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. 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. That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. The time for such argument is passed. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. You may rejoice, I must mourn.. That, which is inhuman cannot be divine. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? This truth is not a doubtful one. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. It was, Milloy continued, a critique of a nation that claimed to hold dear the principles of freedom, justice and equality even as it enslaved black people.. And am I therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national alter and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Yea! Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. I answer: a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. 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. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. 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. 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. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. I will not excuse. 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. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery the great sin and shame of America! In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! WebFrederick Douglass speech What to a Slave is the Fourth of July effectively argues against slavery.
1987 Montana State Football Roster,
Peanut Butter Easter Eggs Church Recipe,
Articles F