home work for American history class

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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.

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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?

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!

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“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 conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern

statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching

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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

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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 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?