[Nearly 160 years after Frederick Douglass first delivered his
iconic address "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?," his
questions and challenges are as relevant as ever.]
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AN INDEPENDENCE DAY REFLECTION  
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Frederick Douglass
July 4, 2023
Yes!
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_ Nearly 160 years after Frederick Douglass first delivered his
iconic address "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?," his
questions and challenges are as relevant as ever. _

An illustration of Frederick Douglass, an American social reformer,
abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman., Image from Universal
History Archive / Universal Images Group / Getty Images

 

_On July 5, 1852, abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a speech at
Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. At that time, an estimated 3.5
million people were enslaved, comprising 14% of the population of the
United States, according to the National Museum of African American
History and Culture
[[link removed]]. The event was
intended to commemorate Independence Day and the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, though Douglass’ powerful oration
became the most memorable portion of the event. It was here that
Douglass, who had himself escaped enslavement 14 years earlier,
delivered what has become one of his best-known speeches. “What to
the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” recognizes the lofty ideals of the
nation’s founders, while boldly naming the hypocrisy inherent in a
nation allegedly anchored in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness,” yet built by Black people stolen from their homes and
families and forced into slavery. _

_Nearly 160 years after Douglass first delivered this iconic address,
his questions and the challenges he issues to those who call
themselves “Americans” are as relevant as ever. Read on to find an
abridged version of Douglass’ address, and find the full, unabridged
speech at _The Root
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_—Sunnivie Brydum
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editorial director_

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 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
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 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 whose
crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the
Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today 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, oh 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, today, 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—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, 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
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 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 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 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 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, 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
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 God.” 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.

 

Frederick Douglass
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American abolitionist, orator, newspaper publisher, and author. He was
born in February 1818, in Talbot county, Maryland, and died
February 20, 1895, in Washington, D.C. He is well-known for his
first autobiography, _Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
an American Slave, Written by Himself_. He became the first Black U.S.
marshal and was the most photographed American man of the 19th
century.

* Frederick Douglass;
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