what to the slave is the fourth of july annotation

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. In a Fourth of July holiday special, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? That is a question Frederick Douglass posed 169 Julys ago in a speech to a group of abolitionists, one that's become perhaps his most famous. 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. [28][29] The head of the organization responsible for the memorial speculated that it was vandalized in response to the removal of Confederate monuments in the wake of the George Floyd protests.[30]. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming hand-bills, headed CASH FOR NEGROES. 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. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. He praises them because they were great men. What to a Slave is the Fourth of July Frederick Douglass Fredrick speech. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. welcome atheism! Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. 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. This year is pretty challenging in the wake of COVID-19, and the event is going to be held online instead of before a live audience like we did last year. Is it at the gateway? one of the most important speeches of the 19th century? Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. How can we sing the Lords song in a strange land? During the 1850's, the Fourth of July served as a reminder of the many horrors and injustices in the world. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. These rules are well established. 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. [Throughout the speech] Douglass looks at the contradictions between the reality of slavery and the lofty claims of a just society outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Creative people have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly. They find common ground in Houghton Library exhibition. that he is the rightful owner of his own body? Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.I was born amid such sights and scenes. The manhood of the slave is conceded. More than 150 years later, Keidrick Roy, a doctoral student in American Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a U.S. Air Force veteran, will host a virtual community reading and discussion of the storied speech at the Somerville Museum on Thursday as part of the annual state-wide MassHumanities program Reading Frederick Douglass Together.. 4th period Mrs. Landrew Fredrick Douglass Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. [26] After the Civil War, Douglass said that "we" had achieved a great thing by gaining American independence during the American Revolutionary War, though he said it was not as great as what was achieved by the Civil War. 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? The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem the Fugitive Slave Law as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal!And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shoutWe have Washington to our father.Alas! 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. ROY: The event that were doing in Somerville puts pressure on whitewashed conceptions of the Fourth of July, as many people to this day still view it as a celebration of American food, fireworks, and freedom. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery. [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. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. To find out what elements make the speech 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' [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. He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. [10] Douglass had spoken at Corinthian Hall in the past. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. that it should be so; yet so it is. 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,. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. ROY:One of the things that Douglass writings shows us is that he believed in amplifying a variety of voices. Easel Activity. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Assignment in book chapter School Alief Early College High School Course English language and literature (ELL2002) Uploaded by God Academic year2021/2022 Helpful? The British accomplished this through religion or more specifically, the church. Is it not astonishing 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, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, 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 as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christians God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men! 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. A self-taught man, he escaped from slavery and eventually became a leader in the abolitionist movement. 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? A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. [9][10] He had previously lived in Boston, but did not want his newspaper to interfere with sales of The Liberator, published by William Lloyd Garrison. GAZETTE: This is your second year as host of Reading Frederick Douglass Together in Somerville. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating freedom. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a mans liberty, hear only his accusers!In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. [13] Although the import of people directly from Africa had been banned in 1807,[14] the domestic slave trade, still legal, was thriving. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. GAZETTE: What is the historical setting for this speech, and why did Douglass focus on the Fourth of July? The founding fathers left black people and women out of these rights for "everyone." On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Douglass was a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. 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. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! [16][17] Finally, the Act did not allow the accused individual of defending themselves in court. On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? [20]:345He also attempts to demonstrate the irony of their inability to sympathize with the Black people they oppressed in cruel ways that the forefathers they valorized never experienced. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. [20]:346 To prove evidence of these inconsistencies, as one historian noted, during the speech Douglass claims that the United States Constitution is an abolitionist document and not a pro-slavery document.[22][23][24]. They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. The 4th of July Address, delivered in Corinthian Hall, by Frederick Douglass, is published on good paper, and makes a neat pamphlet of forty pages. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. 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. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. 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. Over 150,000 persons were sold between 1820 and 1830, and over 300,000 were sold between 1850 and 1860.[15]. 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. One small step toward understanding gravity, Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. The 'Address' may be had at this office, price ten cents, a single copy, or six dollars per hundred. Worksheet Excerpt Analyzing Rhetorical Devices in "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?": There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. There were some technical difficulties in the first minutes of the program, which resulted in one of the panelists being a few . 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. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. [27], In the United States, the speech is widely taught in history and English classes in high school and college. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? by Frederick Douglass 1852 11th Grade Lexile: 1140 Font Size Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was an African American social reformer, orator, and writer. No! Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. 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 slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.But I fancy I hear some one 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. We begin with the words of Frederick Douglass Together in Somerville here you will see men women. Allow the accused individual of defending themselves in court you to celebrate and to it. For centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly rightful owner of his own?! 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