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76. Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July

(1852)

Source: Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (New York,

1855), pp. 441– 45.

The greatest oration on American slavery and American freedom was

delivered in Rochester, New York, in 1852 by Frederick Douglass. Speaking

just after the annual In de pen dence Day celebration, Douglass posed the

question, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” He answered

that July Fourth festivities revealed the hypocrisy of a nation that pro-

claimed its belief in liberty yet daily committed “practices more shocking

and bloody” than any other country on earth. Like other abolitionists,

however, Douglass also laid claim to the found ers’ legacy. The Revolution

had proclaimed “the great principles of po liti cal freedom and of natural

justice, embodied in [the] Declaration of In de pen dence,” from which sub-

sequent generations had tragically strayed. Only by abolishing slavery

and freeing the ideals of the Declaration from the bounds of race could the

United States, he believed, recapture its original mission.

F e l l o w - c i t i z e n s , pa r d o n 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 in de pen dence? Are the great principles of po liti-

cal freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of

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In de pen dence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to

bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the

benefi ts and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting

from your in de pen dence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affi rmative

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 obdu-

rate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully

acknowledge such priceless benefi ts? Who so stolid and selfi sh, 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 this glo-

rious anniversary! Your high in de pen dence only reveals the immea-

sur able distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day,

rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice,

liberty, prosperity and in de pen dence, 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 fet-

ters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him

to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrile-

gious 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 irrecoverable ruin! I can to-

day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woesmitten people!

• • • Fellow- citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the

mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yester-

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day, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that

reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleed-

ing children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cun-

ning, 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 pop-

u lar 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

pop u lar characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing,

there, identifi ed 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 pres-

ent, 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

right and just.

For the present, it is enough to affi rm the equal manhood of the

negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, plant-

ing 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

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teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises

common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the

whale in the Pacifi c, 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’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 own er of his own body? You have already declared it.

Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Repub-

licans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a

matter beset with great diffi culty, 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? speak-

ing of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affi rmatively. 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 fl ay their fl esh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons,

to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their fami-

lies, to knock out their teeth, to burn their fl esh, to starve them into

obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a sys-

tem 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 mis-

taken? 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.

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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 fi ery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach,

withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed,

but fi re; 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 pro-

priety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation

must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be pro-

claimed 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 shame-

less hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Questions

1. What does Douglass hope to accomplish by accusing white Americans

of injustice and hypocrisy?

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