The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro
by Frederick Douglass
A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852
Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens:
He 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 Fourth of
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 he 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.
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of
July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of
your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the
emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the
day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to
the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This
celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your
national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76
years old. l am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so
young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere
speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the
allotted time for individual men; but nations number their
years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in
the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the
period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in
the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds
which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry
flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well
beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she
is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that
high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give
direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart
might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future
might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out
in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is
young.-Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in
the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately
majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth
with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath
and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of
years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back
to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But,
while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave
nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock,
to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As
with rivers so with nations.
Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the
associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it
is, that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British
subjects. The style and title of your "sovereign people" (in
which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British
Crown. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home
government; and England as the fatherland. 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.
But your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of
this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute
character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in
respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens
and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the
measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive,
and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I
scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures
fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of
agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would
certainly prove nothing as to what part I might have taken had I lived
during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America
was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it;
the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly
discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies.
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 men's souls. They who did so were accounted in their day plotters
of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with
the right against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and
with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and
the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day.
The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of
your fathers. But, to proceed.
Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated, by the
home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of
spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they
did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their
conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the
purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference,
coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men
to look back.
As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is
tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow
stronger as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The
greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and
the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But,
with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying
characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were
drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the
exactions complained of.
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even
by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present
rulers.
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men,
and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this
treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly
incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is
always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total
separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling
idea, much more so than we, at this distance of time, regard it.
The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day were, of
course, shocked and alarmed by it.
Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably,
ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect
to any great change (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the
wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much
precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but
silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are
always strongly in favor.
These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers;
and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is
meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we
often find in our papers, applied to some of our old
politicians.
Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and
powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted
vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on,
and the country with it.
On the 2nd of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the
dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property,
clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction.
They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit
upon resolutions, drawn up in our day, whose transparency is at all
equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I
read it.
"Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be
free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all
allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection
between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to
be, dissolved."
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They
succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The
freedom gained is yours; and you, there fore, may properly celebrate
this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in
your nation's history-the very ringbolt in the chain of your yet
undeveloped destiny.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to
celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said
that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of
your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles
contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by
those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places,
against all foes, and at whatever cost.
From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening
clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the
distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt
drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this
day-cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a
storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.
The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an
interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there
were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an
event of special attractiveness.
The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified
and sublime. The population of the country, at the time, stood
at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in
the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered, and
the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of
concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning
had then been reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac
to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under these, and
innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and
independence and triumphed.
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of
this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence
were brave men. They were great men, too-great enough to give frame to a
great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at
one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which
I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and
yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than
admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good
they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite
with you to honor their memory.
They loved their country better than their own private
interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human
excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it
is exhibited it ought to command respect. He who will,
intelligently, lay down his life for his country is a man whom it is not
in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives,
their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country.
In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other
interests.
They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful
submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not
shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but
that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in
the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settIed" that was not
right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final"; not
slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such
men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood
stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate
times.
How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their
movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their
statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in
strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal
principles, and set a glorious example in their defence. Mark them!
Fully appreciating the hardships to be encountered, firmly believing
in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of
an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their
sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they
were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against
them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most
deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism,
and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom,
lay deep, the corner-stone of the national super-structure,
which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.
Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes
are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and
pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is
hushed. Even mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day.
The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents
with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made,
hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day;
while the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation,
echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a vast
continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal
interest-nation's jubilee.
Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes
which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them
better than I do. You could instruct me in regard to them. That is a
branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper
interest than your speaker. The causes which led to the
separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a
tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools,
narrated at your firesides, un folded from your pulpits, and thundered
from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as
household words. They form the staple of your national po etry
and eloquence.
I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably
familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. This is
esteemed by some as a national trait-perhaps a national weakness. It is a
fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation
of Americans and can be had cheap! will be found by Americans. I
shall not be charged with slandering Americans if I say I think the
American side of any question may be safely left in American
hands.
I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other
gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less
likely to be disputed than mine!
My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The
accepted time with God and His cause is the ever-living now.
Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God overhead.
We have to do with the past only as we can make it
useful to the present and to the future. To all
inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained
from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important
time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their
work, and have done much of it well. You live and must
die, and you must do your work. You have no right to
enjoy a child's share in the labor of your fathers,
unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right
to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your
fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us
that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of
their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of
their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations
of it near and remote, ancient and modern.
It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the
children of Jacob to boast, we have "Abraham to our
father," when they had long lost Abraham's faith and spirit. That people
contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham's
great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made
his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing
is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell
you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of
the prophets, and garnished the sepulchers of the righteous?
Washington could not die till he had broken the chains
of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the
price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and
souls of men shout-"We have Washington to our father."-Alas!
that it should be so; yet it is.
The evil, that men do, lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.
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."
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 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 fa
thers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought
light 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
irrevocable 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."
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 shouts
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"; 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 slaveholder, 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 ac
knowledge 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 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 or to write. When you can point to any
such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may
con sent 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 ciphering, 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
sticks, 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 passed.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument,
is needed. O! had I the ability, and could 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 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 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 the 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
shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Take the American slave-trade, which we are told by the papers,
is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us
that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to
show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the
peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the
large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions
are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In
several states this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in
contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) "the internal
slave-trade." It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from
it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is
contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this
government as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words from the
high places of the nation as an execrable traffic. To arrest it,
to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on
the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to
speak of this foreign slave-trade as a most inhuman traffic,
opposed alike to the Jaws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and
destroy it, is admitted even by our doctors of divinity. In
order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their
colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and
establish them selves on the western coast of Africa! It is,
however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by
Americans upon all those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the
men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass with out
condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.
Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade,
the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and
American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for
the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a
man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate
the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of
human stock. You will see one of these human flesh jobbers,
armed with pistol, whip, and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred
men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market
at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or
in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field and the
deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily
along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and
his blood-curdling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted
captives! There, see the old man with locks thinned and gray.
Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders
are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the
brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen,
weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has
been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly
consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the
discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles
simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems
to have torn its way to the centre of your soul The crack you heard was
the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard was from the
woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the
weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her
to move on. Follow this drove to New Orleans. Attend the
auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and
brutally exposed to the shock ing gaze of American
slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and
never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered
multitude. Tell me, citizens, where, under the sun, you can
witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. 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 me the American
slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was
often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street,
Fell's Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves the
slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of
human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the
Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at
the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into
every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival,
through the papers, and on flaming "hand-bills," headed cash for
Negroes. These men were generally well dressed men, and very
captivating in their manners; ever ready to drink, to treat, and
to gamble. 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. When a
sufficient number has been collected here, a ship is chartered for the
purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New
Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in
the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a
certain caution is observed.
In the deep, still darkness of midnight, I have been often
aroused by the dead, heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of
the chained gangs that passed our door. 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. I was glad to find one who sympathized with
me in my horror.
Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active
operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit
I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the
bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity
on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like
horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder.
There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the
lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul
sickens at the sight.
Is this the land your Fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?
But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous
state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the
American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized
in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason and
Dixon's line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and
the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women and children, as
slaves, remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now
an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive
with the star-spangled banner, and American Christianity. Where
these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man
is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman's gun. By that
most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and
person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is
hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of
society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law-makers have
commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your
President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and
ecclesiastics enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious
country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not
fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted
down and, without a moment's warning, hurried away in chains,
and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have
had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no
account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands
superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this
republic, the rights of God included! For black men there is neither law
nor justice, humanity nor religion. The Fugitive Slave Law
makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An
American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to
slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two
villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the
most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of
slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for
himself. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to
hear but one side; and that side is the side of the
oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be
thundered around the world that in tyrant-killing, king-hating,
people-loving, democratic, Christian America the seats of justice are
filled with judges who hold their offices under an open and
palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding the case of a man's liberty,
to hear only his accusers!
In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the
forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the
defenceless, and in diabolical intent this Fugitive Slave Law stands
alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there
be another nation on the globe having the brass and the baseness
to put such a law on the statute-book. 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 nor 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. Did this law concern the "mint, anise, and
cummin"-abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the
sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would
be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout
would go up from the church demanding repeal, repeal, instant
repeal!-And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to so
licit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on
his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another
Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and
the stern old covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox
would be seen at every church door and heard from every pulpit,
and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox
to the beautiful, but treacherous, Queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that
the church of our country (with fractional exceptions) does not
esteem "the Fugitive Slave Law" as a declaration of war against
religious liberty, im plies that that church regards religion simply as
a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital
principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love, and good will
towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing
above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A
worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter
to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the
naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy
is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all
such persons as "scribes, pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe
ofÝ mint, anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of
the law, judgment, mercy, and faith."
But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the
wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the
oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the
shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent
Divines, who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly
given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave
system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave;
that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send
back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all
the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is
palmed off upon the world for Christianity.
For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism!
welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by
those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of
tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more
infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine,
Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done! These ministers
make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither
principles of right action nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love
of God of its beauty and leave the throne of religion a huge,
horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors,
tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. 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 with out 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. All
this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular
worship of our land and nation-a religion, a church, and a worship
which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an
abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the
American church might be well addressed, "Bring no more vain oblations;
incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths,
the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity,
even the solemn meeting. Your new moons, and your appointed feasts my
soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them;
and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you.
Yea' when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are
full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek
judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the
widow."
The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with
what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively
guilty when viewed in its connection with its ability to abolish
slavery.
The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of
commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of
every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive
as truth, when he declared that "There is no power out of the
church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained
in it."
Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday School, the
conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible
and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against
slavery, and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and
blood would be scattered to the winds, and that they do not do
this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind
can conceive.
In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked
to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask,
could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts
for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of
the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight
or flee. 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? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men
of American theology have appeared-men honored for their
so-called piety, and their real learning. The Lords of Buffalo,
the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers
of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of
Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter
denial of the authority of Him by whom they professed to be
called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the
example of the Hebrews, and against the remonstrance of the Apostles,
that we ought to obey man's law before the law of God.2
My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be
supported, as the "standing types and representatives of Jesus
Christ," is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. 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. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men
may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom
Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn; Samuel J. May, of Syracuse; and my
esteemed friend (Rev. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are
shining examples; and let me say further, that, upon these men
lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal,
and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave's
redemption from his chains.
One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the
American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that
occupied by the churches in Eng land towards a similar movement in that
country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating,
elevating and improving the condition of mankind, came forward
promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and re stored
him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a
high religious question. It was demanded in the name of humanity, and
according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons,
the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, the Burchells, and the Knibbs
were alike famous for their piety and for their philanthropy. The
anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for
the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting
that movement:
and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be
an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall
assume a favorable instead of a hostile position towards that movement.
Americans! your republican politics, not less than your
republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of
your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure
Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as
embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to
support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your
countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed
tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your Democratic
institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools
and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to
your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them
with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them,
salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water;
but the fugitives from oppression in your own land you
advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill. You glory in your refinement
and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as
barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a
nation-a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in
cruelty. 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 the oppressor; 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! You are all on fire at the
mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold
as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of
America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you
sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon
labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to
throw off a three-penny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard
earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your
country. You profess to believe "that, of one blood, God made all
nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth," and hath
commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another; yet you notoriously
hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not
colored like your own. You declare before the world, and are understood
by the world to declare that you "hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their
Creator with certain in alienable rights; and that among these are,
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and yet, you hold
securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas
Jefferson, "is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in
rebellion to oppose," a seventh part of the inhabitants of your
country.
Fellow-citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national
inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands
your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and
your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad:
it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of
religion; it makes your name a hissing and a bye-word to a
mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government,
the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. it
fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement; the
deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it
promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth
that supports it; and yet you cling to it as if it were the sheet anchor
of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile
is coiled up in your nation's 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
To palter with us in a double sense:
And keep the word of promise to the ear,
But break it to the heart.
And instead of being the honest men I have before
declared them to be, they were the veriest impostors that ever
practised on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it
there is no escape; but I differ from those who charge this
baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a
slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. 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. 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 Gerrit Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I
think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any
design to support slavery for an hour.
Fellow-citizens! 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.
In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor
sanction of the hateful thing; but interpreted, as it ought to be
interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.
Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them?
Is it at the gate way? or is it in the temple? it is neither. While I
do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion,
let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution
were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slaveholding
instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can any
where be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn
up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of
Rochester to a tract of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now,
there are certain rules of interpretation for the proper
understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well
established. They are plain, commonsense rules, such as you and
I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having
passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of
the constitutionality, or unconstitutionality of slavery, is not
a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a
right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate
that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the
prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American
citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman.
Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the constitution is an object to
which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American
heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is
plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred,
unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator
Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that
which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which
every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. 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. I take it, therefore, that it is not
presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that
instrument.
Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I
defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. 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. 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. There are forces in operation which
must inevitably work the downfall of slavery.
"The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom
of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began,
with hope. While drawing encouragement from "the Declaration of
Independence," the great principles it contains, and the genius
of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious
tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same
relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now
shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same
old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when
such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could
formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social
impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the
privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a
change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities
and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne
away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating
the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and
under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are
its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations
together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is
comparatively annihilated.-Thoughts expressed on one side of the
Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.
The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in
grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages,
is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has
not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste,
sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The
iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast
with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven
garment. "Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God." In the fervent
aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every
heart join in saying it:
God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o'er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th' oppress'd shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom's reign.
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.
God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.