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Internet Modern History Sourcebook
Frederick Douglass:
The Hypocrisy of American Slavery,
July 4, 1852
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), born a slave in Maryland, became
the best known Black American leader of the 19th century. The
first half of his life, after his escape from slavery in 1838,
was spent in the abolition movement. Later he served in a number
of positions, inlcuding US ambassador to Haiti. His 1845 autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass: an American Slave was a major influence on debate,
although to escape re-enslavement, Douglass had to leave the US
to seek refuge in England. With financial help from English Quakers,
Douglass purchased his own freedom from his former owners and
returned in 1847 as a free man. From Rochester, New York, he
published the abolitionist paper The North Star, and helped
escaped into Canada. In 1852, , invited to give speech in Rochester, Douglass delivered
the following indictment of a a nation celebrating freedom and
independence, while keeping slaves.
Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called
upon to speak here today? 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 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 today? 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 (Babylon) whose crimes, towering
up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty,
burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the
mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday,
are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that
reach them. If I do forget, if I do not 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 here, 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 Fourth 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 slave-holder,
shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some 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 slave-holders 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 these same crimes will
subject a white man to like punishment.
What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral,
intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave
is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute
books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines
and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and 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 I will 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 plowing,
planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting
houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals
of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading,
writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries,
having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors,
orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises
common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the
whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside,
living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families
as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and
worshipping the Christian 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 understand?
How should I look today 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 who does not know that slavery is
wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob
them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them
ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them
with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their
limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction,
to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their
flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters?
Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained
with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I have better employment
for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine;
that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are
mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman
cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that
can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument,
is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's
ear, I would today 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 denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a
day that reveals to him more than all other days of 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 shouts of liberty and
equality, hollow mock; 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 of the earth guilty of practices
more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States
at this very hour.
Go 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.
Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852
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(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
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