Frederick Douglass
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 schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.
The
papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. This
certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for 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.
This,
for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of
your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is
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. I 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 ruler.
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
2d 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, therefore, may
properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in
your nation’s history—the very ring-bolt 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 ring-bolt 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 fame 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
“settled” 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 defense. Mark them!
Fully
appreciating the hardship 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 superstructure, 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—a 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, unfolded 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 poetry 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.
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 sepulchres 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 so 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 fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and
healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July
is yours,
not mine. You may rejoice, I must
mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty,
and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and
sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak
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, lowering 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.”
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
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 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, thenwill 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 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 bum 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 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 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 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 cruelly 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 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 laws 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
themselves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that,
while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the
foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass
without 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 America 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-chilling 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 center 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
the drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see
the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking 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 have 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?
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 lawmakers 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 are neither law, justice, humanity, not 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 con signs 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 oneside;
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 in the case of a man’s
liberty, hear only his accusers!
In
glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of
administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, 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 not 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 cumin“—abridge the fight 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 solicit 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, implies 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 of mint, anise,and cumin, 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 throng 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 without 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 ablations; 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 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 whatquarter, 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 the professed to he called to the ministry, deliberately taught us,
against the example or the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the
Apostles, they teach that we ought to obey
man’s law before the law of God.
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 England 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 restored 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, and 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 or 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 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 her oppressors; 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
threepenny 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 inalienable 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 pretence, 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 by 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 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 imposters that ever practiced 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 Gerritt 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 gateway?
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
slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can
anywhere 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 track
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, common-sense 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 fight 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 fight, 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
tell 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,
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 fights again
Restore.
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered fights 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.
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.
God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But all to manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house, the thrall
Go forth.
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But all to manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house, the thrall
Go forth.
Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive—
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive—
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.
Source: Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, ed.
Philip S. Foner (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), 188-206.
