Speech by
Frederick Douglass
July 5, 1852
Frederick Douglass gave this speech on July
5, 1852 at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of
Independence, held at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York.
Fellow
Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The
signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men,
too great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a
nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from
which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and
yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were
statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles
they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory....
...Fellow-citizens,
pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What
have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the
great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that
Declaration of Independence, extended to us? 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! Then would my task be light, and my
burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy
could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that
would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and
selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's
jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not
that man. 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. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high
independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings
in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich
inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by
your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and
healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours,
not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. 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. Do you mean, citizens, to
mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your
conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a
nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of
the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! 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. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We
hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that
carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required
of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the
Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand
forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof
of my mouth."
Fellow-citizens,
above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!
whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more
intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not
faithfully 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!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in
with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and
would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then,
fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular
characteristics from the slave's point of view. 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. 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 Ñ the great sin and shame of
America! "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. Would you argue more, an denounce less; would you persuade more,
and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed." But, I
submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the
anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do
the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave
is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders
themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They
acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. 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. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral,
intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It
is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments
forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read
or to write. 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. 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. 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 ciphering, 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 Christian's 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? that he is the rightful owner of
his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of
slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? 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? How
should I look to-day, in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a
discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it
relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to
make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is
not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong
for him.
What, am I
to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to
work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their
fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to
load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction,
to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to
starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a
system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will
not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments
would imply.
What, then,
remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not
establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in
the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a
proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.
At a time
like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the
ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery
stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern
rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle
shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. 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.
What, to the
American slave, is your 4th of July? 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. 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 denunciation 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 hypocrisy
-- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody
than are the people of the 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....
...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. There
are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery.
"The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is
certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. 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. Nations do not now stand in
the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut
itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its
fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long
established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in,
and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and
enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness.
But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and
empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates
of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the
globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth.
Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide,
but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion.
Space is comparatively annihilated. -- Thoughts expressed on one side of the
Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.
The far off
and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial
Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty,
"Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. 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. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. 'Ethiopia, shall,
stretch. out her hand unto Ood." In the fervent aspirations of William
Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:
God speed
the year of jubilee
The wide
world o'er!
When from
their galling chains set free,
Th'
oppress'd shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the
yoke of tyranny
Like brutes
no more.
That year
will come, and freedom's reign,
To man his
plundered rights again
Restore.
God speed
the day when human blood
Shall cease
to flow!
In every
clime be understood,
The claims
of human brotherhood,
And each
return for evil, good,
Not blow for
blow;
That day
will come all feuds to end,
And change
into a faithful friend
Each foe.
God speed
the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on
earth
Shall
exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a
tyrant's presence cower;
But to all
manhood's stature tower,
By equal
birth!
That hour
will come, to each, to all,
And from his
Prison-house, to thrall
Go forth.
Until that
year, day, hour, arrive,
With head,
and heart, and hand I'll strive,
To break the
rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler
of his prey deprive --
So witness
Heaven!
And never
from my chosen post,
Whate'er the
peril or the cost,
Be driven.
No comments:
Post a Comment