It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. 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: Th oppressd shall vilely bend the knee. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. We have long had in this country, a system of iniquity which possessed the power of blinding the moral perception, stifling the voice of conscience, blunting all human sensibilities and perverting the plainest teaching of the religion we have here professed, a system which John Wesley truly characterized as the sum of all villainies, and one in view of which Thomas Jefferson, himself a slaveholder, said he "trembled for his country" when he reflected "that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever." The New National Era, September 8, 1870 S. R. Ward Douglass Monthly, May 1861 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. Douglass answer has inspired and challenged historians for over a century. Juneteenth Reading List: 10 Books To Learn More About Black Independence Day, Your email will be shared with newsone.com and subject to its, 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, . Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers yourUnion. WebDouglass, Frederick, 1818-1895 Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895 (Speaker) Douglass, Helen, 1838-1903 (Speaker) Created / Published 1846 - 1894 Headings - United States- His own testimony is nothing. . Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Executive Producer Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and scholar David Blight discuss Frederick Douglass' life and legacy in part one of this never-before-seen conversation. As a special feature the volume also presents Douglasss only foray into fiction, the 1853 novella The Heroic Slave, about Madison Washington, leader of the real-life insurrection on board the domestic slave-trading ship Creole in 1841 that resulted in the liberation of more than a hundred enslaved people. The country was poor in the munitions of war. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. This list may not reflect recent changes . The following 3 pages are in this category, out of 3 total. Rochester, New York, December 8, 1850 They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. Most noteable is a transcription of Frederick Douglass' speech given at the 2nd Annual 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, aseventh partof the inhabitants of your country. 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. The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. appreciated. WebWORD COUNT: 1,660 words. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. The Future of the Colored Race 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. Release date Title Notes July 22, 1982 Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches: March 8, 2022: Nicholas Bromell, a historian who appears in the PBS film, says it was routine for even progressive leaders like abolitionists to warn of the hordes of Chinese immigrants coming to America during that era. Douglass closed out his speech with the following emphasis on the continued presence of black Americans in the United States, their allegiance and willingness to assume their full role in developing the countrys success. The Inaugural Address Includes a fourth edition of Lunsford Lane's slave narrative. In a speech delivered in June 1863, Douglass spoke what the future may hold for Black people. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! The speech, reported in the Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. . He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. 2023 Accessible Archives Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. & David Blight continue their discussion on Frederick Douglass by taking a closer look at some of his most renowned speeches. He served under five presidents as U.S. From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as Americas literary canon. In a final celebratory post for Black History Month 2023, it is worth returning to the 1883 Douglass Banquet. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. When he shakes off his rags and wretchedness and presumes to be a man, and a man among men, he contradicts this popular standard and becomes an offense to his surroundings. 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. If that is what they wanted, they had any number of other choices, such as Iran, Russia or Hungary.. 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! Your effort and contribution in providing this feedback is much You may rejoice, I must mourn.. Boston, Massachusetts, February 5, 1862 Douglass Monthly, August 1859 We have put together a list of thefollowing speeches that have opened the minds of the American citizens to the uncountable cases of injustices inflicted on the black community through slavery. Corrections? They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. You know what is a swine-drover? Here are such powerful works as What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, Douglasss incandescent jeremiad skewering the hypocrisy of the slaveholding republic; The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered, a full-throated refutation of nineteenth-century racial pseudoscience; Is it Right and Wise to Kill a Kidnapper?, an urgent call for forceful opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act; How to End the War, in which Douglass advocates, just days after the fall of Fort Sumter, for the raising of Black troops and the military destruction of slavery; There Was a Right Side in the Late War, Douglasss no-holds-barred attack on the Lost Cause mythology of the Confederacy; and Lessons of the Hour, an impassioned denunciation of lynching and disenfranchisement in the emerging Jim Crow South. WATCH VIDEO: Should Black Americans Celebrate Independence Day? I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slaveryas a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening the horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. 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. I will show you a man-drover. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Follow the drove to New Orleans. In a speech made to the nations Black leaders in 1864, Douglass said. 8:31 AM EDT, Tue October 11, 2022. Douglass Monthly, August 1863 Fighting Rebels with Only One Hand But, to proceed. Discovery Company. Many of Douglass claims have been validated by the passage of time. 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. We cannot afford to set up for ourselves a separate political party or adopt for ourselves a political creed apart from the rest of our fellow citizens. The North Star, May 30, 1850 WebManuscript/Mixed Material Image 2 of Frederick Douglass Papers: Speech, Article, and Book File, 1846-1894; Speeches and Articles by Douglass, 1846-1894; 1848; Jan.; Frederick Douglass Paper, March 4, 1853 This, however, did not answer the purpose. He barely knew his mother, who lived on a different plantation and died when he was a young child. 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. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. 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. Our Position in the Present Presidential Canvass What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? After the fall of Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass managed to retain high-ranking federal appointments. "Having to fight that battle over and over every day. 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. The film suggests that Douglass facility with words was just as important as his physical courage in taking on the institution of slavery. Douglass closed out his speech with the following emphasis on the continued presence of black Americans in the United States, their allegiance and willingness to assume their full role in developing the countrys success. But Douglass Composite Nation speech was filled with an audacious hope that belied the pervasive prejudice of his era. Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. Washington, D .C ., April 14, 1876 But now is the time, the important time. The North Star, March 15, 1850 Boston, Massachusetts, January 26, 1865 That belief was so ingrained that a politician like Garrett Davis, a Democratic senator from Kentucky, could openly say: I want no Negro government; I want no Mongolian government; I want the government of the White man which our fathers incorporated.. In 1855, he published his second autobiography. Excerpt from Frederick Douglasss Fifth of July Speech (1852). The Slaveholders Rebellion: An Address 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 customers in other countries: Mexico and South America: Contact TriLiteral be warned! Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. People likely related more to the fury Douglass expressed at American hypocrisy and racism in his 1852 Fourth of July speech. Douglass wrote an open letter his former master, Thomas Auld, who prior to Self-Made Men: An Address WebThis is a list of films produced and distributed by HBO Films. Give Us the Freedom Intended for Us By the 1890s Douglass, aging and in ill health but still out on the lecture circuit, felt hard-pressed to sustain hope for the transformations at the heart of the Composite Nationality speech.. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. No political figure not even Abraham Lincoln talked that way about the US in the mid to late 19th century. Frederick Douglass published three autobiographies. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. A battle is still being fought over that idea today. 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! Frederick Douglass worked tirelessly to make sure that emancipation would be one of the war's outcomes. WebThe Writings and Speeches Subseries includes addresses given by Hunter and others. 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. The Do-Nothing Policy Yet they persevered. The Proclamation And A Negro Army (1863) performed by Colman Domingo. The Color Line I lived on Philpot Street, Fells 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. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. September 9, 1847 Many of you understand them better than I do. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Reconstruction Valedictory America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Significantly, he held these positions at a time when violence and fraud severely restricted African-American political activism. If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. In the name of your country, torn, distracted, bleeding, and while you are weeping over the bloody graves of more than two hundred thousand of your noblest sons, many of whom have been cut down, in the midst of youthful vigor and beauty, we [Black people] implore you [white people] to abolish slavery. You were under the British Crown. Frederick Douglass Paper, September 4, 1851 Tags: Black History Month, Frederick Douglass, Gilded Age. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. 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. To clap back, they wrote an epic pamphlet on why the culture of colored Americans were insufficiently displayed at the fair. A Call for the British Nation to Testify against Slavery: An Address Why Should a Colored Man Enlist? There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings (The Library of Black America series): Foner, Philip S., Taylor, Yuval: 9781556523526: Amazon.com: Books Books History Americas Buy new: $33.40 List Price: $35.00 Details Save: $1.60 (5%) FREE Returns FREE delivery Thursday, December 15 Select delivery location Yea! 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? We Are the Dream: The Kids of the Oakland MLK Oratorical Fest. The Negro Exodus from the Gulf States: A Paper We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. 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 toour father. Alas! 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. (Charles Brantley), 1859-1912, Du Bois, W. E. B. What Was Frederick Douglasss Position on Womens Rights? when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Frederick Douglass Paper, June 2, 1854 Until the courts of the country shall grant the colored man a fair trial and a just verdict, this discussion will go on. Who can reason on such a proposition? Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. Conservative American politicians have expressed open admiration for leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is widely seen as eroding democracy in his country in part by demonizing immigrants and eroding democratic norms. The Rights of Women What Abraham Lincoln said in respect of the United States is as true of the colored people as of the relations of those States. People wept as he recounted the horrors of slavery or erupted in laughter as he mimicked his former slave master. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. The Accessible Archives staff was prompt and extremely helpful in helping me retrieve the information I was looking for. 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. His. 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