I Could Never Again Raise My Voice Against Democracynow org

Fellow Citizens, I am non wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Annunciation of Independence were brave men. They were neat men, too � great plenty to requite frame to a neat age. It does not oft happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly slap-up men. The signal from which I am compelled to view them is non, certainly, the near favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their swell 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 retention....

...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, permit 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 slap-up 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 limited devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to united states?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative respond could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my chore exist light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there and so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who then obdurate and expressionless to the claims of gratitude, that would non thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would non give his voice to dandy the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that homo. In a case like that, the impaired might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But such is not the state of the case. I say information technology with a pitiful sense of the disparity between united states of america. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence just reveals the immeasurable altitude between us. The blessings in which you, this twenty-four hour period, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.�The rich inheritance of justice, freedom, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to yous, has brought stripes and expiry to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. Yous may rejoice, I must mourn. To elevate a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of freedom, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Practice you mean, citizens, to mock me, by request me to speak to-24-hour interval? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And permit me warn you lot that it is unsafe to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-twenty-four hour period accept up the plaintive complaining of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we saturday 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 united states a song; and they who wasted the states required of united states of america mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How tin we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, allow my right mitt forget her cunning. If I practise not retrieve thee, let my tongue carve 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 past the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I practise not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this mean solar day, "may my correct paw forget her cunning, and may my natural language cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chinkle in with the popular theme, would be treason well-nigh scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, and then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall run across this twenty-four hour period and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do non hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the grapheme and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this quaternary of July! Whether nosotros turn to the declarations of the by, or to the professions of the nowadays, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America.is imitation to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be simulated to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and haemorrhage slave on this occasion, I will, in the proper 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 phone call in question and to denounce, with all the accent I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery � the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I volition non excuse"; I will apply the severest language I tin can control; and yet not one word shall escape me that any human, whose judgment is non blinded by prejudice, or who is not at centre a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

Merely I fancy I hear some one of my audition say, "Information technology is just in this circumstance that y'all and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you debate more than, an denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your crusade would be much more likely to succeed." But, I submit, where all is plain there is nada to exist argued. What betoken in the anti-slavery creed would you accept me argue? On what branch of the subject area 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 information technology in the enactment of laws for their government. They admit it when they punish defiance on the role of the slave. There are 70-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 simply ii of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like penalisation. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the education of the slave to read or to write. When yous can bespeak to whatsoever such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, and then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then volition I fence with you that the slave is a human!

For the present, it is enough to assert the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it non amazing 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, argent and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, 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 equally husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality across the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me debate that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own trunk? You have already alleged it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to exist 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-mean solar day, in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a soapbox, to evidence that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of information technology relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to brand myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. In that location is not a man below the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to contend that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to piece of work them without wages, to proceed them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to trounce them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to chase them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their mastcrs? Must I fence that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my fourth dimension and force than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to exist argued? Is information technology that slavery is not divine; that God did non establish information technology; 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 fourth dimension for such statement is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation'due south ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of bitter ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For information technology is not light that is needed, simply fire; it is not the gentle shower, only thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the convulsion. 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 human must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I respond; a mean solar 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. 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 denunciation of tyrants, contumely fronted impudence; your shouts of freedom 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, charade, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to embrace upward crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is non a nation on the earth guilty of practices more than shocking and encarmine than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Get where you may, search where yous will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Former World, travel through Southward America, search out every corruption, and when you have plant the last, lay your facts past 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....

...Allow me to say, in decision, notwithstanding the dark motion picture I have this day presented, of the country of the nation, I do not despair of this country. At that place 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 cartoon encouragement from "the Declaration of Independence," the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered past the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not at present stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can at present shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the aforementioned old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful grapheme could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Noesis was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. Simply a change has at present come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires take become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the earth. It makes its pathway over and nether the body of water, every bit well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer dissever, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. -- Thoughts expressed on 1 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 in that location be Lite," has not nevertheless spent its strength. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or forehandedness, can at present hibernate itself from the all-pervading lite. The iron shoe, and crippled human foot of China must be seen in dissimilarity with nature. Africa must rising and put on her nevertheless unwoven garment. 'Ethiopia, shall, stretch. out her hand unto Ood." In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and allow every heart join in maxim 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 joint,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Similar brutes no more.
That twelvemonth will come, and freedom'south reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

God speed the day when homo blood
Shall end to period!
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 true-blue friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious 60 minutes,
When none on world
Shall practise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant'due south presence cower;
Merely to all manhood'southward stature tower,
By equal nascence!
That 60 minutes will come, to each, to all,
And from his Prison-house, to thrall
Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, make it,
With head, and centre, and mitt I'll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his casualty deprive --
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the price,
Be driven.

The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Book Ii
Pre-Civil State of war Decade 1850-1860
Philip South. Foner
International Publishers Co., Inc., New York, 1950

dorsum

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Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html

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