American History assignment Homework

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F R E DE R I C K D O U G L A S S

Fourth of July Speech (1852)

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was one of the most remarkable Americans ever to live, and certainly the most

prominent leader among African Americans through the second half of the nineteenth century. Douglass was

born a slave on a large Maryland plantation in 1818, suspected to be the son of his master. He learned to read at

an early age and later testified that his literacy had given him an absolute determination to be free. After

becoming a skilled shipyard worker in Baltimore, Douglass escaped to the North in 1838. Douglass met

prominent white abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips and, by the early 1840s, was

drawing large audiences across the Northeast as an antislavery speaker. His autobiography, published in Boston

in 1843, secured his fame and remains one of the classic narratives of the slave experience.

The following speech was delivered on Independence Day of 1852 before an antislavery audience of 600 in

Rochester, New York. As you read this excerpt, evaluate Douglass’s oratorical skill and imagine his credibility, as

a former slave, in the minds of his listeners. Douglass went on to serve the Union cause during the Civil War as

a military recruiter and a principled critic of Lincoln’s war leadership, continually pushing the president for

bolder policies in regard to emancipation and black equality. After the war, Douglass served in a number of

diplomatic and government positions and ceaselessly advocated for the rights and uplift of African Americans.

From Frederick Douglass, Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall (Rochester: Lee, Mann & Co., 1852), 3–4, 14–

21.

e who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have.

I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly,

nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite

unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much

previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally

considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease,

my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public

meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.

The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th July oration. This certainly, sounds large, and out

of the common way, for me. It is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and

to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect

gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from

which I escaped, is considerable—and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the

former, are by no means slight. That I am here to-day, is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of

gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation,

nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have

been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous

indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you.

* * *

Fellow-citizens, pardon 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 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?

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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.”1

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 pale2 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 justice, 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 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 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 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, 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.”3

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains,

heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts4 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;”5 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 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

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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 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 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 stick, 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

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 every day practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting

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barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Study Questions

1.  What tone did Douglass employ at the very beginning of his speech? In what way was this part of a conscious oratorical strategy? Which parts of the speech might have been most uncomfortable or even

offensive to his audience?

2.  What were Douglass’s feelings toward the Declaration of Independence? To what degree was he or was he not an American patriot?

3.  Fully explain why Douglass cites the scriptural passage on the “rivers of Babylon.” What was his criticism of American Christians in the 1850s? What can you surmise about his own religious beliefs?

4.  Analyze this speech in terms of its literary quality. How did a former slave develop such power and eloquence as a writer? What can you imagine of Frederick Douglass’s ability as a public speaker?