What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
Rochester, New York — July 5, 1852
"This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn."
Delivered to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, this speech is considered one of the greatest pieces of American oratory. The former slave and self-taught intellectual stood before a white audience celebrating Independence Day and delivered an unforgettable indictment of American hypocrisy.
The Opening
Douglass begins with deliberate humility. He acknowledges the greatness of the Founders—their courage, their principles, their sacrifice. He praises the Declaration of Independence as a document of noble ideals. He builds common ground with his audience before turning the blade.
Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon 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 of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?
"I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us."
The 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?
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? 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.
"To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity."
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 the United States at this very hour."
The Internal Slave Trade
Douglass describes the domestic slave trade in unflinching detail—the coffles of chained human beings marched through American cities, the auction blocks, the families torn apart, the flesh sold like cattle. He speaks from experience.
Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade—the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American 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.
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. Tell me, citizens, where under the sun can you witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking?
The American Church
Douglass reserves particular scorn for the American church, which he calls the great "bulwark of American slavery." Ministers who quote Scripture to justify bondage are worse than the slaveholders themselves—they give sin the sanction of religion.
"The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie."
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 is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen.
The Constitution
Yet Douglass refuses despair. He argues—against many abolitionists of his time—that the Constitution itself is not a pro-slavery document. Read its text: it speaks of persons, not property. Its preamble declares liberty and justice for all. The problem is not the document but its violation.
In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing called slavery; and I hold that interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.
The Grounds for Hope
Douglass concludes not with despair but with fierce hope. The forces of history, commerce, communication, and conscience are arrayed against slavery. The nation is young; its crimes are not yet fixed in unchangeable character. Change is possible—indeed, inevitable.
"I do not despair of this country... The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain."
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.
"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."
— Frederick Douglass
End of Text
Selected passages from the original speech. Read the full text for Douglass's complete argument.
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