Frederick
Douglass: What to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), born a slave in
His 1845 autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass: an American Slave was a major influence on debate, although to
escape re-enslavement, Douglass had to leave the
In 1852 , invited to give speech in
Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? 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 disparity
between us. I am not included within the pale of this 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 life and
healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of 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 today? 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 (
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail
of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered
more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. 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!"
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 here, 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 Fourth 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.
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 on the
public mind. Would you argue more and 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 slave-holders
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
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 and 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 I will 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 plowing, 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 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, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and
above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian 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 understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, 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 who 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 past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I
would today 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 denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? 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. 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 shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; 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
of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people
of these
Go 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.
Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852
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(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
halsall@murray.fordham.edu