"The
Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro"
Frederick
Douglass, July 5, 1850
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 Ñ 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.ÑThe 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
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
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
The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The
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.