Frederick Douglass (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 gaze 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 3 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 5 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.
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.”
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 8 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,
then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of
the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting
and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing
bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold;
that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants
and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors,
editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of
enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the
whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living,
moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and
children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and
looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon
to prove that we are men!
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty?
that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it.
Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans?
Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset
with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of
justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of
Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a
natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively,
negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous,
and to offer an insult to your understanding. — There is not a man beneath the
canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to
rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of
their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with 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 cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your
celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national
greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless;
your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty
and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings,
with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast,
fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which
would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty
of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United
States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all
the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America,
search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the
side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that,
for revolting barbarity and 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 bloodchilling 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 heartrending 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 lawmakers have commanded all good
citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of
State, our 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 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 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 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 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 Boling broke, 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 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 socalled 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 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 antislavery 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 proslavery 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 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.
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.
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.
Source: Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings,
ed. Philip S. Foner (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), 188-206.
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