President John F. Kennedy On July 4, 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered this speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? I will not. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. WebDescription. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. As noted here, that banquet was attended by prominent 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. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. 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. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. 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. 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. Towards the end of From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. The time for such argument is past. But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. Oh! 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. For who is there so cold that a nation sympathy cannot warm him, who so adore it and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Born to an enslaved family in 1818, Frederick Douglass never knew his actual birthday, a fact not uncommon for those enslaved. Who can reason on such a proposition? These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. There are 72 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. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. 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. It was, Milloy continued, a critique of a nation that claimed to hold dear the principles of freedom, justice and equality even as it enslaved black people.. 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. WebFrederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 INTRODUCTION (Exordium) 1. Frederick Douglass: (06:44) Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. 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? They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! in preference to the gospel,as preached by those Divines! Frederick Douglass thought that such rationalizations were crap, and he had the right to think so. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. They were great in their day and generation. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the lame man leap as an hart.. Standing here identified with the American bondsmen, making his wrongs mine. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. 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. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. You may well cherish the memory of such men. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moments warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Nobody doubts it. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Americans! Create a better, more engaging experience for every student. What? On July 5, 1852, eminent African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered a brilliant speech to nearly six hundred people filling Rochester, New Yorks Corinthian Hall, as organized by the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society. Were the nation older, the patriots heart might be sadder, and the reformers brow heavier. 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. They, that can, may. Frederick Douglass: (07:35) The anti-slavery movementtherewas 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. And the conscience of the nation must be roused. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. 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. The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. 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. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. I cannot. Mark them! Yea! When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. In the summer of 2020, the U.S. commemorated Independence Day amid nationwide They inhabit all our Southern States. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Copyright 2023 Interactive One, LLC. America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. I am not that man. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. Fromwhat quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? 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. 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. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. Build with the best speech-to-text APIs around. 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. Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. With them, nothing was settled that was not right. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slaves point of view. 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.. Your President, your Secretary of State, ourlords,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. Yea! Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is, today, in active operation in this boasted republic. What then remains to be argued? Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. Thu 5 Jul 2018 07.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 24 Jul 2019 11.58 EDT. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer and advocate, abolitionist, orator, writer, minister, and statesman. 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. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! 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 papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? When Douglass delivered his famous The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro address before an audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, he was issuing a scathing indictment of American hypocrisy, Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy reminded readers. We thank you for taking the time to watch this community reading of Frederick Douglasss What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Source: Blight, David. A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852 . No! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. During There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. But now is the time, the important time. 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 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 meretoolsand body-guardsof the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. At the time of the delivery of this speech, Douglass had been living in Rochester, New York for several years editing a weekly abolitionist newspaper. He was invited to give a fourth of July speech by the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester. In the early 1850s, tensions over slavery were high across the county. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. How unlike the politicians of an hour! 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. Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations Jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from his limbs? Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. 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.