In this Fourth of July speech from 1852, African American
antislavery leader Frederick Douglass denounces the celebration of independence
while people are enslaved. Douglass impatiently dismisses the idea that he even
needs to mount an argument against the existence of slavery. “At a time like
this, scorching iron, not convincing argument, is needed,” he declares. Douglass
delivered the speech in Rochester, New York, where he based his abolitionist
activities.
Frederick Douglass: 'The Mournful Wail of Millions'
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 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 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 judgement 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 someone 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, then 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 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 manner of 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'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 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 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
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 iron, not convincing
argument, is needed. O! 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 proclaimed and denounced.
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 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—a thin veil to cover up crimes
which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not 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.
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.
Source: The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches.
MacArthur, Brian, ed. Penguin Books, 1996.
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