AUT: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (fwd)

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Reminder: slavery has not disappeared, quasi-slavery is growing, and death
in the USofA is the penalty for revolt, whether you are innocent or guilty
as Texas has just demonstrated once again.
H.
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Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 01:32:37 EDT
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Subject: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

TITLE: What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

AUTHOR: Frederick Douglass

DATE: July 5th, 1852

WHERE: Meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery
              Society, Rochester Hall, Rochester, N.Y.

SUMMARY: To illustrate the full shame of slavery, Douglass delivered
                   a speech that took aim at the pieties of the nation -- the
                   cherished memories of its revolution, its principles of
                   liberty, and its moral and religious foundation. The Fourth
                   of July, a day celebrating freedom, was used by Douglass to
                   remind his audience of liberty's unfinished business.

LOCATION: Web: http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/doug_a10.htm

Print: The speech was originally published as a pamphlet. It
can be located in James M. Gregory's, "Frederick Douglass,
the Orator" (New York, 1893), 103-06.

EXCERPT:

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultous 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-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 judgement is not
blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder,
shall not confess to be fight 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 acknowledgement 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, their 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
cyphering, 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
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 lo 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? Must I argue that
a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution,
is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments 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. O! had I the ability, and could I 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 denunciations 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 these 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.

Copyright (c) 1997-2000 Douglass Project.



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