You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nationa system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. Another remarkable thing about Douglass is that he was an early champion of voting rights for women. or is it in the temple? There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. Is slavery among them? But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. He took action to raise the voices of others and to aid their work on the national stage, especially that of two Black women in the last half of the 19th century. 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. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to. 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. Douglass' speech came just 11 years before Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation hitting a poignant point in American history through his targeting of the slave as a crucial figure in desperate need of independence. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, on July. I hold that every American citizen has a fight to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. "Meaning of the Fourth of July to a Negro" by Bridget Durham The Fourth of July is a day of celebration for many Americans because on July 4th, 1776, America declared independence from Britain and said that everyone was free under the US government, right? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. [19]. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nations bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!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.Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped. He faults America for utter hypocrisy and betrayal of those values in maintaining the institution of slavery. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. welcome anything! The 4th of July Address, delivered in Corinthian Hall, by Frederick Douglass, is published on good paper, and makes a neat pamphlet of forty pages. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. the feeling of despair in the face of obstacles. Before you read the speech you can follow these links to learn more about Douglass's life and the evolution of his thought in this period. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem the Fugitive Slave Law as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. 5.0. The time for such argument is passed.At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. One small step toward understanding gravity, Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shoutWe have Washington to our father.Alas! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? 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. [Throughout the speech] Douglass looks at the contradictions between the reality of slavery and the lofty claims of a just society outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? be warned! You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! Is it at the gateway? Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" in 1852, drawing parallels between the Revolutionary War and the fight to abolish slavery. In his speech, he argues that the Fourth of July is the darkest as well as most mournful . These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.Fellow-citizens! From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. 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. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. [20]:346 To prove evidence of these inconsistencies, as one historian noted, during the speech Douglass claims that the United States Constitution is an abolitionist document and not a pro-slavery document.[22][23][24]. In this respect, Douglass's views converged with that of Abraham Lincoln's[25] in that those politicians who were saying that the Constitution was a justification for their beliefs in regard to slavery were doing so dishonestly. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. Space is comparatively annihilated. Rhetorical Analysis Of Harvey Fourth Of July. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. 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. 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. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Douglass was a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. we wept when we remembered Zion. 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. The speech has been notably performed or read by important figures, including the following: The paragraphing referenced here is taken from an edition of the speech at, African Americans In Congress: A Documentary History, by Eric Freedman and Stephen A, Jones, 2008, p. 39, "Activist Public Relations and the Paradox of the Positive: A Case Study of Frederick Douglass's Fourth of July Address", "One of American History's Worst Laws Was Passed 165 Years Ago", "The Operation of the Fugitive Slave Law in Western Pennsylvania from 1850 to 1860", The American Constitutional Experience: Selected Readings & Supreme Court Opinions, Frederick Douglass on Slavery and the Civil War: Selections from His Writings, "Frederick Douglass Statue Torn Down On Anniversary Of Famous Speech", "Frederick Douglass statue torn down in Rochester, N.Y., on anniversary of his famous Fourth of July speech", "Frederick Douglass statue torn down on anniversary of great speech", "VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' Descendants Deliver His 'Fourth Of July' Speech", A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass's Descendants Deliver His 'Fourth of July' Speech, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=What_to_the_Slave_Is_the_Fourth_of_July%3F&oldid=1137650578. Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? we wept when we remembered Zion. 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 bum their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating . Worksheet Excerpt Analyzing Rhetorical Devices in "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?": [16][17] Finally, the Act did not allow the accused individual of defending themselves in court. Douglass addressed a part of the population for which the day had huge significance the true independence, he argues, is not for the American people, but for the American slave. Students also viewed Nobody doubts it. I lived on Philpot Street, Fells Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? The drove moves tardily. O! Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal!And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. In short, it gave the federal government an active role in maintaining the Souths system of slavery. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea. True Christians, according to Douglass, should not stand idly by while the rights and liberty of others are stripped away. As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appearedmen, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass What will this years event be like? Wells, which was incorporated into the preface of her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. I am also hosting a summer reading and discussion series called Race, Fragility, and Anti-Racism through the Somerville Museum and the City on a Hill network of local churches. It is neither. Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. Summary of Part 1:In part one of the speech "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July", Fredrick Douglass. Repetition Parallel structure ethos pathos Analogy Simile/Metaphor Rhetorical Question logos Part 2 - Slavery in America Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called uponto speak here today? What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? [26] After the Civil War, Douglass said that "we" had achieved a great thing by gaining American independence during the American Revolutionary War, though he said it was not as great as what was achieved by the Civil War. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) the internal slave trade. It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. He thinks they were extremely intelligent, and the thinks it is admirable that when they realized they were oppressed by Britain, they rebelled. These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers. The British accomplished this through religion or more specifically, the church. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. To find out what elements make the speech 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' (1982). I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.What, then, remains to be argued? This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. One of the biggest challenges we face in our present moment is building sustainable movements that fundamentally change peoples minds about race and racism. Summary: "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", otherwise known as "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," Frederick Douglassoutlines a careful argument against the institution of slavery and more specifically the Fugitive Slave Act. 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. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more. He wrote a glowing letter of encouragement to Harriet Tubman, which served as the preface to Sarah Bradfords 1869 biography about Tubmans life. [9][10] He had previously lived in Boston, but did not want his newspaper to interfere with sales of The Liberator, published by William Lloyd Garrison. They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. The inaugural meeting between six women took place in Corinthian Hall on August 20. [11] Additionally, he had spoken there less than three months prior to this speech, on March 25. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? Great for your high school American Literature class. 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