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 mastcrs? 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.
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