It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. 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. Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. They inhabit all our Southern States. 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. Douglass believed that slavery could be eliminated with the support of the church, and also with the reexamination of what the Bible was actually saying. 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 hypocrisya thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. You have no right to enjoy a childs share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. 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 Christians 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? They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper. be warned! 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. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. 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. 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. 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? May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? In a Fourth of July holiday special, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. 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. 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 to the Slave is the Fourth of July | Historical Context The Colonial regime paved way for the transportation of slaves from different parts of the world, mostly from the African continent to work in southern states of America on cash crop plantations that generated a great source of income. Youll never experience a black hole, but Avi Loeb can help you imagine one, We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term., Level of cannabis use could determine post-op outcomes, Historian says Fla. dispute shows why AP class in African American studies is needed, Why Church Committee alums urged new House panel to avoid partisanship, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, Rewriting history to include all of it this time. Frederick Douglass, a well-known Black writer, orator, and abolitionist was asked to address an anti-slavery group on the July 4 holiday in 1852. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. Text Frederick Douglass, " What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. Is it at the gateway? What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. As with rivers so with nations. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. To find out what elements make the speech 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. Must we allow symbols of racism on public land? On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.I have detained my audience entirely too long already. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.I was born amid such sights and scenes. 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. . there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. 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. Douglass equates this to being worse than many other things that are banned, in particular, books and plays that are banned for infidelity. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! 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. The4th of July is the first great fact in your nation's history the very ringbolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destinyPride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetualremembrance. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? 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? With this product, you can choose to either have your students read the entire speech and annotate and analyze Douglass' rhetorical devices or you can choose to have your students read shorter excerpts from the speech and do an abbreviated annotation and analysis of rhetorical devices. You live and must die, and you must do your work. He thinks they were extremely intelligent, and the thinks it is admirable that when they realized they were oppressed by Britain, they rebelled. [20]:344. You may rejoice, I must mourn. You have already declared it. 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. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. 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. Cling to this daycling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight, Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline, With them, justice, liberty and humanity were final; not slavery and oppression. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. That is a question Frederick Douglass posed 169 Julys ago in a speech to a group of abolitionists, one that's become perhaps his most famous. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. He can bring no witnesses for himself. "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Essentially, Douglass criticizes his audience's pride for a nation that claims to value freedom though it is composed of people who continuously commit atrocities against Blacks. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. 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. Ossie DavisA Voice Ringing O'er the Gale! Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. 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? I repeat, I am glad this is so. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried mens souls. Summary of Part 1:In part one of the speech "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July", Fredrick Douglass. It is not that pure and undefiled religion which is from above, and which is first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. 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. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. 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! True Christians, according to Douglass, should not stand idly by while the rights and liberty of others are stripped away. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! Douglass then pivots to the present, stating that "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future". There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. Panel on dispossession of African Americans says burying truth keeps Black Americans dispossessed, Legal scholar and historian puts the push to remove Confederate statues in context, Members of the community share memories, plans, hopes for the holiday, Quantum computing simulation reveals possible wormhole-like dynamics. I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. Worksheet Excerpt Analyzing Rhetorical Devices in "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?": Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. 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 hypocrisya thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. As the project scholar, my role is to advise the process as it rolls out, to give a talk that provides contemporary and historical context and to facilitate the community discussion around the speech against the backdrop of other relevant issues. The inaugural meeting between six women took place in Corinthian Hall on August 20. welcome atheism! nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, the slave plantation, from which I escaped, and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you, This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! 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. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.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. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? GAZETTE: What is something you have discovered about Douglass while researching this speech and his work more broadly that people might be surprised to learn? Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. Douglass declares that true freedom can not exist in America if Black people are still enslaved there and is adamant that the end of slavery is near. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. [5] American studies professor Andrew S. Bibby argues that because many of the editions produced for educational use are abridged, they often misrepresent Douglass's original through omission or editorial focus. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. 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 slaverythe great sin and shame of America! 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. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass-- a former American slave, abolitionist leader and adroit speaker-- spoke in Rochester, New York about the affectation of celebrating independence. He had delivered a series of seven lectures about slavery there in the winter of 185051. Building off of this, Douglass criticizes the Fugitive Slave Act, holding that in this act, "slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form." 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! Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Follow the drove to New Orleans. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. It is neither. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? The speech notes the contradiction of the national ethos of United States and the way enslaved persons are treated. Were not only going to be reading books like White Fragility, and Divided by Faith, but were also going to read and watch a number of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., and documentaries like 13th and King in the Wilderness, as we try to get at the root of racial division so we can come together to remove it. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass annotation?
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