http://www.redandgreen.org/speech.htm
July 4, 1852 Rochester, New York
Fellow Citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I
called to speak here today? What have I or those I represent
to do with your national independence? Are the great principles
of political freedom and 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 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
like as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad
sense of 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 today? 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, towering up to heaven,
were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that
nation in irrecoverable ruin. I can today take up the lament
of a peeled and woe-smitten people.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes! 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 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 today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant
shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not 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 here, 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 Fourth 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 slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some 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 slave-holders 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 these same crimes
will subject a white man to like punishment. 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 teaching of
the slave to read and 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, then I will 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 plowing,
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 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 the enterprises common to other men-digging gold in California,
capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle
on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning,
living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above
all, confessing and worshiping the Christian 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 understand?
How should I look today 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 and insult to your understanding. There is not a
man beneath the canopy of heaven who 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 last, 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 burn 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 employment 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. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's
ear, I would today 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 denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July I answer,
a day that reveals to him more than all other days of 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,
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's thin veil
to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation of 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 every-day practices
of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting
barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
