What
to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
By Frederick
Douglass : JULY 5, 1852
Tuesday, July 7, 2015.
Mr.
President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience
without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not
remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more
shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A
feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited
powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous
thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this
sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine
will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much
misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public
meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.
The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a
4th [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way,
for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful
Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither
their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall,
seems to free me from embarrassment.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance
between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is
considerable—and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to
the former, are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter
of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised,
if in what I have to say. I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my
speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less
learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly
together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed
to lay them before you.
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the
4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your
political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated
people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your
great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that
act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of
your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76
years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young.
Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the
life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual
men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you
are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering
in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in
the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above
the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending
disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that
America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her
existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of
truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the
patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future
might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow.
There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are
not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may
sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing
and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise
in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth
of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same
old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be
turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch,
and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed
glory. As with rivers so with nations.
Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at
length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it
is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The
style and title of your “sovereign people” (in which you now glory) was not
then born. You were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the English
Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home
government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in
the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children,
such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed
wise, right and proper.
But, your fathers, who had not adopted the
fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the
absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in
respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints.
They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government
unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be
quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of
those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of
agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly,
prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great
controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is
exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble
brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American
Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce
against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls.
They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators
and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the
weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here
lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our
day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of
your fathers. But, to proceed.
Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by
the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit,
earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a
decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly
unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves
treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered.
They were not the men to look back.
As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the
ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as
it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of
British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the
British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be
the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were
drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions
complained of.
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted
now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present
ruler.
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were
wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment.
They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their
colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just
here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born!
It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time,
regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were,
of course, shocked and alarmed by it.
Such people lived then, had lived before, and will,
probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any
great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be
redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course
of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of
this sort of change they are always strongly in favor.
These people were called Tories in the days of your
fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by
a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in
our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.
Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was
earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations
against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with
it.
On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental
Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property,
clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They
did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions,
drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh
your minds and help my story if I read it. “Resolved, That these united
colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they
are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political
connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be,
dissolved.”
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution.
They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom
gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary.
The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history—the very
ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude,
prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said
that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your
nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that
instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on
all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
From the round top of your ship of state, dark and
threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance,
disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain
broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day—cling to it, and to its principles,
with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.
The coming into being of a nation, in any
circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides general considerations,
there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an
event of special attractiveness.
The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple,
dignified and sublime.
The population of the country, at the time, stood
at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the
munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a
wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such
as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and
discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under
these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty
and independence and triumphed.
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for
the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence
were brave men. They were great men too—great enough to give fame to a great
age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number
of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not,
certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds
with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for
the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you
to honor their memory.
They loved their country better than their own
private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human
excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is
exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down
his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise.
Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the
cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all
other interests.
They were peace men; but they preferred revolution
to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink
from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew
its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them,
nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and
humanity were “final”; not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the
memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid
manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.
How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all
their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship
looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the
distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example
in their defense. Mark them!
Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered,
firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny
of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their
sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to
assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the
fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a
glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of
justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure,
which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.
Of this fundamental work, this day is the
anniversary. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners
and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is
hushed. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The
ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending
peal of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons
are preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and
multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a
vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interests
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!
THE PRESENT.
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.”
“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your
national independence?”
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am
I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do
with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom
and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended
to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the
national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for
the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an
affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would
my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold,
that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the
claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless
benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the
hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn
from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might
eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”
But, such is not the state of the case. I say it
with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale
of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the
immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day,
rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty,
prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not
by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes
and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I
must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of
liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery
and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to
speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you
that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up
to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation
in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled
and woe-smitten people!
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea!
we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the
midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a
song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the
songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget
thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember
thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous
joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous
yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that
reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding
children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over
their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most
scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day,
and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing,
there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate
to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation
never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the
declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of
the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past,
false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will,
in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is
fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded
and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the
emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery—the great
sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will
use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me
that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at
heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it
is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to
make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and
denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be
much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing
to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On
what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I
undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already.
Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment
of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience
on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of
Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be),
subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject
a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that
the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the
slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are
covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the
teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws,
in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the
manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air,
when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that
crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, their 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 past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not
convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the
nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule,
blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light
that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the
storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be
quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the
nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its
crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I
answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the
gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your
celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national
greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless;
your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty
and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and
thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere
bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up
crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the
earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of
these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam
through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through
South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay
your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will
say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America
reigns without a rival.
INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE.
Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told
by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us
that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show
that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of
American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in
one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers
in this horrid traffic. In several states, this trade is a chief source of
wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the
internal slave trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from
it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade
has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It has been
denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an
execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a
squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country,
it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic,
opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy
it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. In order to put an end to it,
some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free)
should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of
Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured
out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged
in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their
business is deemed honorable.
Behold the practical operation of this internal
slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and
America religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the
market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They
inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the
highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these
human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company
of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at
New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit
purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark
the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who
drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries
on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and
gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders
are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe
in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she
thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat
and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap,
like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles
simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn
its way to the center of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the
slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her
speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on
her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Attend the
auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and
brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove
sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from
that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can
witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the
American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the
United States.
I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the
American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often
pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point,
Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin,
anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for
favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a
grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His
agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their
arrival, through the papers, and on flaming “hand-bills,” headed CASH FOR
NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in
their manners. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a
slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been
snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal
drunkenness.
The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by
dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient
number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of
conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison
to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the
antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.
In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been
often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained
gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I
was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her
say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the
chains, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized
with me in my horror.
Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day,
in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I
see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding
footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the
slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine,
knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly
broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of
men. My soul sickens at the sight.
“Is this the land your Fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?”
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 & Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York has
become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and
children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an
institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the
Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the
merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for
the sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the
liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain
is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society,
merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your lawmakers have commanded all good
citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of
State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to
your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed
thing. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been
hunted down and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and
consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and
children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The
right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and
to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there
are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes
MERCY TO THEM, A CRIME; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American JUDGE
GETS TEN DOLLARS FOR EVERY VICTIM HE 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.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
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 cummin”—abridge the fight to sing psalms, to partake of the
sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be
smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from
the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal! And it would go hard with
that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing
this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with,
another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the
stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen
at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no
more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen
Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional
exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war
against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as
a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring
active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. It esteems
sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above
practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse
to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the
naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a
curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as
“scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, and
have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”
THE CHURCH RESPONSIBLE.
But the church of this country is not only
indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the
oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield
of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the
very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and
the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly,
be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to
send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the
followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off
upon the world for Christianity.
For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity!
welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by
those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of
tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this
age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke,
put together, have done! These ministers make religion a cold and
flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of
compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of
religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors,
tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion”
which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be
entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without
hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts
the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and
slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor,
oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the
robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies
his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the
brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and
the popular worship of our land and nation—a religion, a church, and a worship
which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination
in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be
well addressed, “Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto
me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with;
it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed
feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and
when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea! when ye
make many prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do
evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the
fatherless; plead for the widow.”
The American church is guilty, when viewed in
connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively
guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The sin
of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert
Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the
actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that “There is
no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not
sustained in it.”
Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday
school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and
tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and
slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to
the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful
responsibility of which the mind can conceive.
In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have
been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could
such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the
redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle
arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. From 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 so-called piety,
and their real learning. The LORDS of Buffalo, the SPRINGS of New York, the
LATHROPS of Auburn, the COXES and SPENCERS of Brooklyn, the GANNETS and SHARPS
of Boston, the DEWEYS of Washington, and other great religious lights of the
land, have, in utter denial of the authority of Him, by whom the professed to
he called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example or the
Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teach “that we ought
to obey man’s law before the law of God.”
My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such
men can be supported, as the “standing types and representatives of Jesus
Christ,” is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the
American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great
mass of the religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I
thank God that there are. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these
Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. May of
Syracuse, and my esteemed friend 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.
RELIGION IN ENGLAND AND RELIGION IN AMERICA.
One is struck with the difference between the
attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that
occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country.
There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and
improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds
of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. There, the question
of emancipation was a high[ly] religious question. It was demanded, in the name
of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the
Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were
alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery
movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church
took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement
in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of
this country shall assume a favorable, instead or a hostile position towards
that movement. Americans! your republican politics, not less than your
republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of
liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the
whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political
parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of
three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned
headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic
institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards
of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of
oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations,
cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to
them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt,
arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal
education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained
the character of a nation—a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and
perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad
story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your
gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her
oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave,
you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the
nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are
all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as
cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You
discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which,
in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the
storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring
the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your
country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of
men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men,
everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your
hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before
the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you “hotel these
truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; and yet, you hold securely, in a
bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of
that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the
inhabitants of your country.
Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your
national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your
republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your
Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your
politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a
hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your
government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It
fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of
education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters
crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it,
as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a
horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is
nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God,
tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty
millions crush and destroy it forever!
THE CONSTITUTION.
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 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.
“[L]et 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.”
Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to
which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously
imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that
instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the
hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution
is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is
slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is
neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion,
let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were
intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why
neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. What
would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose
of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of
land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper
understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They
are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand
and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea
that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is
not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a fight
to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to
use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this
fight, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a
Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the constitution is an object
to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too
devoted. He further says, the constitution, in its words, is plain and
intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of
our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the
fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties,
which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The
testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named,
who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. I
take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an
opinion of that instrument.
Now, take the constitution according to its plain
reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On
the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely
hostile to the existence of slavery.
I have detained my audience entirely too long
already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to
give this subject a full and fair discussion.
“Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding
the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not
despair of this country.”
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.