Prometheus 6

Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July

July 4, 1852
Rochester, New York

Fellow Citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called
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 natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of
Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to
bring our humble offering 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 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 halleluiahs 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 like a hare."

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad
sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale
of this 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 justicc, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by
your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that
brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to
me. This Fourth of 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 rhat nation in irrecoverable ruin. I can
today take up the lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes! 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 songs of Zion. How can we sing the
Lord's song in a strange land?: If I forget thee, O 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 into]erable by the jubilant
shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not 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 here, identified with
the American bondmad, 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 Fourth 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 Americal "I will not equivo-
cate; 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
slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some 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 slave-holders 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
these same crimes will subject a white man to 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 and 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 tbe 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 I will 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 plowing,
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 the enterprises common to other men-digging gold
in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep
and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking,
planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children,
and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian 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 bis 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
understand? How should I look today in the presence of Ameri-
cans, 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 and insult to your
understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of
heaven who 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 last, 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 fiod 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. Oh! had I the ability, and could I 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 storrn, 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 denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a
day that reveals to him more than all other days of 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 hypocrisys
thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of
savages. There is not a nation of 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 every-day practices of this
nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity
and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.