Deuteronomy 16:18-20, 17:6-7, 19:15,16-21 and Numbers 35:30 |
See Micah 6:8, Amos 5:24, Isaiah 56:1 & 7 and 2 Chronicles 7:14 |
5 July 1852
| Occasion:
Meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, Rochester
Hall, Rochester, N.Y. To illustrate the full
shame of slavery, Douglass delivered a speech that took aim at the pieties
of the nation -- the cherished memories of its revolution, its principles
of liberty, and its moral and religious foundation. The Fourth
of July, a day celebrating freedom, was used by Douglass to remind his audience
of liberty's unfinished business.
|
| At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument,
is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's
ear, I would, to-day, 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 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly 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 denunciations 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 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.
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