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Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and its crimes against God and man must be denounced. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, andthugs. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. I will not. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. 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. VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech. And the conscience of the nation must be roused. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. That point is conceded already. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. WebAn excerpt from the 1847 Frederick Douglass speech given for the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. WebA speech celebrating both Lincoln and African Americans freedom wrought by Lincoln. You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. 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. Web" 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 When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. Community Reading: Frederick Douglass's "What Frederick Douglass: (01:08) Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. 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. Frederick Douglass's, What To the Slave Is the Fourth of Read its preamble, consider its purposes. We need the storm. Is it not astonishing that while we are plowing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metal 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 we are engaged in all the enterprises, common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planting, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all confessing and worshiping the Christian God and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.. But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. A RESTful API to access Revs workforce of fast, high quality transcriptionists and captioners. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. He can bring no witnesses for himself. You have no right to enjoy a childs share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. Would you argue more and denounce less? The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. WebFrederick Douglass, Fifth of July speech (1852) O! The manhood of the slave is conceded. 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 ofHimby whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example or the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teachthat we ought to obey mans law before the law of God. 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. But I fancy, I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression upon the public mind. Celebrating Frederick Douglass through Transcription It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. 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. President John F. Kennedy On July 4, 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered this speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; buthow, we ask, could such a thing be done? 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. Douglass views the monument and the day's ceremonies as reflecting honor upon African An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.. We are called upon to prove that we are men. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. Sign up for NewsOne's email newsletter! It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! On July 5, 1852, eminent African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered a brilliant speech to nearly six hundred people filling Rochester, New Yorks Corinthian Hall, as organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. 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. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic. Frederick Douglass that it should be so; yet so it is. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. Frederick Douglass: (03:37) Its quite a remarkable speech as Douglass in a way reenacts his own journey in appreciation for the work that Lincoln did, not just for blacks, but for whites in this country. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. 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. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. 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. WebIn the late 1860sat a moment of great hope for the promise of equality under the lawthe famed orator and once-enslaved abolitionist Frederick Douglass took his Our Composite Nation speech on the road to argue for a plural American democracy. But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. The propriety of the nation must be startled. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. Convert your audio or video into 99% accurate text by a professional. Frederick Douglass Your cause would be much more likely to succeed. WebIn this speech, Frederick Douglass reflected on how the outpouring of joy at the conclusion of the Civil War turned to mourning with Lincolns assassination. From police shootings to the wage gap to crippling stereotypes (and everything in between), there are too many parallels today with what Douglass described in his speech to white America, including this relevant line. The manhood of the slave is conceded. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. 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. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos. Frederick Douglass They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. Oration by Frederick Douglass, delivered on the occasion of the It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. His own testimony is nothing. You have already declared it. These rules are well established. 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. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers yourUnion. Youmay rejoice,Imust mourn. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. As with rivers so with nations. Get a weekly digest of the weeks most important transcripts in your inbox. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. 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. 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.. There is not a nation of the earth, guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. I think that, in whatever else I may be deficient, I have Then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful? We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul! 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. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. 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. 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. 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, 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.