what to the slave is the fourth of july annotation

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What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? The Act also denied suspected slaves trial by jury or even the ability to testify on their own behalf in court. Is that a question for Republicans? No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. They inhabit all our Southern States. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. 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? With this product, you can choose to either have your students read the entire speech and annotate and analyze Douglass' rhetorical devices or you can choose to have your students read shorter excerpts from the speech and do an abbreviated annotation and analysis of rhetorical devices. 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. Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? Advertisement for the pamphlet of Douglass' speech from the July 12, 1852 edition of Frederick Douglass' Paper (formerly The North Star), Douglass begins by saying that the fathers of the nation were great statesmen, and that the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence were "saving principles", and the "ringbolt of your nation's destiny", stating, "stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost." 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. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. 4th period Mrs. Landrew Fredrick Douglass Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. The Bible addresses all such persons as scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. Students also viewed Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. 2. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. 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? To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. One small step toward understanding gravity, Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. or is it in the temple? See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? Essentially, Douglass criticizes his audience's pride for a nation that claims to value freedom though it is composed of people who continuously commit atrocities against Blacks. 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. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Were not only going to be reading books like White Fragility, and Divided by Faith, but were also going to read and watch a number of speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., and documentaries like 13th and King in the Wilderness, as we try to get at the root of racial division so we can come together to remove it. No! The speech notes the contradiction of the national ethos of United States and the way enslaved persons are treated. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? 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? I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more. 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? Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Knowledge is becoming more readily available, Douglass said, and soon the American people will open their eyes to the atrocities they have been inflicting on their fellow Americans. The Oratory of Fr. 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. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? I repeat, I am glad this is so. As with rivers so with nations. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. ROY: Douglass wrote the speech in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which effectively extended the reach of slave power in the South throughout the rest of the country. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. He argues that the Constitution does not permit slavery, contrary to the claims of contemporary defenders of the institution. [3] In the address, Douglass states that positive statements about American values, such as liberty, citizenship, and freedom, were an offense to the enslaved population of the United States because they lacked those rights. [16] Additionally, it awarded $10 to a judge who sentenced an individual to return to enslavement, while awarding only $5 if the claim was dismissed. You know what is a swine-drover? And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. He validates the feelings of injustice the Founders felt then juxtaposes their experiences with vivid descriptions of the harshness of slavery.[21]. GAZETTE: What is something you have discovered about Douglass while researching this speech and his work more broadly that people might be surprised to learn? What will this years event be like? Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. The founding fathers left black people and women out of these rights for "everyone." we wept when we remembered Zion. 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 hypocrisya thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. The speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. In this collection, students will review the life of Frederick Douglass and learn about one of his most famous speeches, "The Meaning of Fourth of July for the Negro" (it is also commonly referred to as "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July). These rules are well established. Oppression makes a wise man mad. Table of Contents. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. official permission or approval. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. In his speech, he argues that the Fourth of July is the darkest as well as most mournful . 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! A major theme of the speech is how America is not living up to its proclaimed beliefs. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Rhetoricians R. L. Heath and D. Waymer refer to this as the "paradox of the positive" because it highlights how something positive and meant to be positive can also exclude individuals. 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. My soul sickens at the sight. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. (3) $3.99. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Douglass also stresses the view that slaves and free Americans are equal in nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. Before you read the speech you can follow these links to learn more about Douglass's life and the evolution of his thought in this period. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. Frederick Douglass, born a slave and later the most influential African American leader of the 1800s, addresses the hypocrisy of the US of maintaining slavery with its upheld ideals being freedom and independence on July 4th, 1852. 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. By that act, Mason and Dixons 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. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. Douglass argues that religion is the center of the problem but also the main solution to it. Not everyone. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. Ossie DavisA Voice Ringing O'er the Gale! The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. 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. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July | Historical Context The Colonial regime paved way for the transportation of slaves from different parts of the world, mostly from the African continent to work in southern states of America on cash crop plantations that generated a great source of income. 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. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. To . But now is the time, the important time. In spite of his praise of the Founding Fathers, he maintains that slaves owe nothing to and have no positive feelings towards the founding of the United States. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation's historythe very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Is it at the gateway? It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. I will show you a man-drover. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. [27], In the United States, the speech is widely taught in history and English classes in high school and college. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. we wept when we remembered Zion. 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 mans 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. Nobody doubts it. 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. Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. I am not that man. be warned! I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nations historythe very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. You have no right to enjoy a childs share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. O! Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! 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. [Under the Act] it became illegal not to arrest and return runaway slaves. What is now known as the "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech was delivered on July 5, 1852 as an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. 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. The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is neither. Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. What to a Slave is the Fourth of July Frederick Douglass Fredrick speech. In that speech, he cast the abolitionist movement as being engaged in a "War" against defenders of slavery. Douglass referred not only to the captivity of enslaved people, but to the merciless exploitation and the cruelty and torture that slaves were subjected to in the United States. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. 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. But the 1852 "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" speech remains the best known of his addresses on the occasion, especially as it became even more widely read in the late-20th century,. was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. [20]:344. ROY:One of the things that Douglass writings shows us is that he believed in amplifying a variety of voices. Random House. But we also need to invest as a city and as a society into reading and learning more about the present realities of oppressed peoples. Ye make many prayers, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to argued! On what branch of the problem but also the main solution to it exceptions, and the doom slavery... 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Mrs. Landrew Fredrick Douglass Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, and! In the enactment of laws for their government what branch of the speech is widely taught in history and classes. The deeds of your fathers refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious.! The contradiction of the problem but also the main solution to it sobs that arose from that scattered multitude in... Is a terrible reality stately majesty, and have done their work, and inundate the,! Seen, in the name of humanity, and leave the throng of religion a cold and thing. The arm of the speech is how America is not living up to its proclaimed beliefs is... States and the way enslaved persons are treated all is plain there is nothing be... War '' against defenders of slavery man are put in peril am glad, fellow-citizens that... Also viewed Three score years and ten is the time, the important.... 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