Hello,
I'm David Blight I teach history at Yale University and
I've written the recent biography of Frederick Douglass
Called "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom."
I'm recording an
Introduction for the National Park Service
Which has sponsored a collective reading of
Douglass's greatest speech, the Fourth of July speech, that
he delivered on July 5 of 1852
This video shows a collaboration of close-up images of various
spokespeople, usually using a smart phone or computer
camera to read a portion of Douglass's speech.
People have submitted videos from locations across the United
States.
The readers are people of diverse races, ages,
and genders: a testament to the impact of Douglass's words across the
world. Some readers are park rangers, others are connected to the
Network to Freedom community in other ways,
including formal partnerships or informal partnerships.
Readers filmed in a wide variety of locations -
from all over...some from their homes, others from sites
that were relevant to Douglass's life, some from sites that are relevant to
African-American History more broadly.
Certainly you will be able to hear and
see the passion in their voices, bringing Douglass's words
alive almost 160 years later.
Let me offer a brief introduction to this
rhetorical masterpiece of American Abolitionism.
First of all: the context.
This is the summer of 1852.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" has just been
published that spring - it is taking the world by storm -
It is being already
reprinted by July in numerous languages.
Americans who heard Douglass that day among the 600 people
in Corinthian Hall or those who would read the pamphlet which he published
with the text of this speech immediately afterward may indeed have had Harriet
Beecher Stowe's characters in their minds.
But, even more importantly, the context is
two years after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.
And, the resistance and rescues that that
law had caused. The Fugitive Slave Act had radicalized the American Abolitionism.
Douglass plants this speech into that moment.
And, furthermore it's an election year.
It's a presidential election year of 1852, and both political parties,
which are beginning to tear themselves apart, are gearing up for
the election in the fall. The crisis over slavery,
its existence sentence expansion,
Is taking over
American politics. And Douglass writes this speech.
Now, the speech can be read in my view, like
a symphony -
- in three movements.
Quickly,
That first movement is when Douglass, as you'll hear,
sets his audience at ease.
He calls the Fourth of July the "American
Passover." He honors the Founding Fathers - the genius of the
Founding Fathers. He describes
their brilliance in creating these creeds in the Declaration of Independence.
Then he says there are some
dark clouds on the horizon. He names the principles of the Declaration
of Independence and calls them "the saving principles." So he is
he is honoring the founding,
and then begins to transition.
And that second movement of the symphony,
the longest movement of the three,
which is usually the case in music as well, and
this second part of this great speech
Douglass in effect says, well,
'Why if you invited me here? Pardon me,' he says, "The Fourth of
July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, but
I must mourn." And he rains down those
pronouns of 'you' and 'your' and 'you' and 'your' on his audience.
But, more importantly
in this long middle section, this middle movement of the symphony,
Douglass gives his audience punishment. His
theme becomes the hypocrisy of the American people. He takes
his audience through a litany of the horrors of the African
slave trade, the holds of a slave ship, of the auction blocks in
America, of the domestic slave trade across the landscape of the South.
It's about every horror you can imagine, thrown in front of
his audience as they have never heard it before.
And, after this
after raining about twelve pages of this down his listeners, he
ends that section
Like the Puritain's jeremiads of old, with the image
of what he calls a horrible reptile.
curled up at the heart, at the nation' heart,
about to strike about to eat out your heart.
And, then process the second movement of the symphony
comes to a hault.
And, you can sense the pause in speech.
And, then Douglass transitions
to that last, short movement of the symphony.
He says,
'But, it may not be too late. Your country is still
malleable, it is still
young. There may still the chance for you to save yourselves.'
He gives them a brief take
on his new view of the anti-slavery
interpretation of the Constitution,
And, then he ends
with part of that hymn, actually, or poem,
written by William Lloyd Garrison, his previous mentor, in the
anti-slavery movement - a portion of which is, "God speed
of the year of jubilee
to the wide world over, 'til that
year, day, hour arrive with hand, and head,
and heart, I'll strive."
What Douglass has just done is given
his audience and to his readers and to us a work of art.
But, he's also given us
an explanation of the hypocrisy of the roots
of Americans slavery and he has warned the nation, if it does not
face this question, if it does not solve this question,
slavery would destroy them.
He had 600 people in the audience that day in Corinthian Hall
in Rochester. He had that speech printed up immediately and it went on
the road, selling for about a dollar per copy. I hope you enjoy the
reading of this sponsored by the National Park Service and I hope
you will all, after you've heard the speech, read it
for yourselves. It is as I said, a rhetorical masterpiece.
Thank you very much.
Mr. President, Friends,
And, Fellow Citizens: [He] who could
address this audience without a quailing sensation has stronger nerves
and I have. I do not remember ever to have ever appeared as
a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly,
nor with greater distrust my ability,
then I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite
unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech.
The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and
study for its proper performance.
I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat
and unmeaning I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered.
Should I seem at ease,
my appearance with much misrepresent
me. The little experience I have had in interesting public meetings,
in country schoolhouses, unveils me nothing on the present occasion.
The papers and placards in I am to deliver a Fourth of July
oration.
This certainly sounds large, and
out of common way, for it is true that I have often had the
privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall and to address many who now honor
me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect
gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall seems to free me from
embarrassment.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the
distance between this platform
and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable -
and, the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the
latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here today is,
to me, a matter of astonishment
as well as of gratitude.
You will not, therefore, be surprised,
if in what I have to say I evince
no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any
high sounding exordium.
With little experience and less learning,
I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and
trusting to your patient and generous indulgence,
I will proceed to lay them before you.
This, for the purposes of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birthday of
your National Independence, and of your political freedom
This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God.
It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance;
and to the signs, and to the wonders associated with [that day and that
act], This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of
your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America
is now is 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens,
that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age
for man, is but a near speck in the life of a nation.
Three score years and ten the a lot of time for individual men; but
nation's number of years by thousands. According to this fact, you
are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in
the period of childhood.
I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is
much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer
is met with angry flashes, portending disasters times;
but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young,
and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence.
May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice, of
truth will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older,
the patriot's heart might be sadder, and reformer's brow heavier.
Its future might be shrouded in gloom and the [hope] of its prophets go out in sorrow.
There is consolation in the thought that America is young.
Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages.
They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land,
refreshing
and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also
They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated
wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back
to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever.
But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up,
and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock,
to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory.
As with rivers
so with nations.
Fellow-citizens,
I shall not presume to dwell at length
on the associations that cluster about this day.
The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people
of this country were British subjects.
The style and title of your “sovereign people” (in which you now
glory)
was not then born.
You were under the British Crown.
Your fathers esteemed the [British] Government
as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government,
you know, although a considerable distance from your home,
did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon
its colonial children such [restraints, burdens,] and limitations,
as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right, and proper.
But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day,
of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ
from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those
burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures
of government unjust, unreasonable, and [offensive], and
altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens,
that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of
your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth
much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken,
had I lived during the great controversy of 1776.
To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy.
Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave,
can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies.
It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England,
and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did
so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels,
dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong,
and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of
all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed
by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers.
But, to proceed.
Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly
sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful,
and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose.
They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet
they persevered. They were not the men to look back. As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold,
when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow
stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of
kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted
its justice, and
the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic
of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned
in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England;
but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler.
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad,
they became restive under this treatment.
They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial
capacity.
With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression.
Just here,
the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born!
It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it.
The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.
Such people lived then,
had lived before,
and will, probably,
ever have a place on this planet;
and their course,
in respect to any great change,
(no, matter how great the good to be attained or wrong redressed
by it),
may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars.
They hate all changes,
but silver, gold, and copper change! Of this sort of change
they are always strongly in favor.
These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers
and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea
that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we
often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.
Their opposition to then dangerous thought was
was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations
against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.
On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental
Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property,
clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national
sanction.
They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit
upon resolutions, drawn up in our day who's transparency is an all
equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story
if I read it.
"Resolved,
That these united colonies are, and of
right, ought to be free and Independent States;
That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection
between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved."
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded;
and to-day you reap the fruits of their success.
The freedom gained is yours;
and you, therefore, may properly celebrate
this anniversary.
The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history - the very ring-bolt
in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude,
prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said
that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your
nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it.
The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles.
Stand by those principles,
be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
From the round top of your ship of state,
dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy
billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose
to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks!
That bolt drawn, that chain broken,
and all is lost.
Cling to this day — cling to it, and to its principles, with
the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.
The coming into being of a nation, in
any circumstances, is an interesting event.
But, besides general
considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which
make the advent of this republic
an event of special attractiveness. [The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime.]
The population of the country,
at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions.
The country was poor in the munitions of war.
The population was weak and scattered,
and the country
a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means
of concert and combination, such as exist now.
Neither steam nor lightning
had then been reduced to order and discipline.
From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days.
Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages,
your fathers declared for liberty
and independence
and triumphed.
Fellow Citizens,
I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the
Declaration of Independence were brave men.
They were great men too -
great enough to give fame to a great age.
It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one
time, such a number of truly great men.
The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly,
the most favorable;
and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration.
They were statesmen, patriots and heroes,
and for the good they did,
and the principles they
contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.
They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest
form of human excellence all and see that it is a rare
virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect.
He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is
not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives,
their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country.
In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.
They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to
bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against
oppression. They showed
forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them,
nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty
and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish
the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation.
Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.
How circumspect, exact and proportionate were
all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour!
Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment,
They seized upon eternal principles,
and set a glorious example in their defense. Mark them!
Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably
inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity,
soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume,
wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers,
the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of
a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great
principles of justice and freedom, lay the deep corner-stone
the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.
Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary.
Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm.
Banners and pennants wave exultingly
on the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed.
Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day.
The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with
the ascending peal of a thousand church bells.
Prayers are made, hymns are sung,
and sermons are preached in honor of this day;
while the quick martial tramp of a great and
multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains
of a vast continent, bespeak the occasion
one of thrilling and universal interest —
a nation’s jubilee.
Friends and citizens,
I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary.
Many of you understand them better than I do.
You could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge
in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker.
The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British
crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools,
narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered from
your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household
words. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence.
I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably
familiar with all facts which make in their own favor.
This is esteemed by some as a national trait —
perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth
or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap!
will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans,
if I say I think
the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands.
I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers
to other gentlemen whose claim
to have
been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine!
My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and
his cause is the ever-living now.
'Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead; Act, act in the living present, Heart within, and God overhead.'
We have to do with the past
only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future.
To all inspiring motives, to
noble deeds which can be gained from the past,
we are welcome. But now is the time,
the important time.
Your fathers have lived,
died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well.
You live and must die, and you must do your work.
You have no right to enjoy
a child’s share in the labor of your fathers,
unless your children are to be blest by your labors.
You have no right to wear out and
waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to
cover your indolence.
Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize
the wisdom and virtues of their fathers,
but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own.
This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of
it near and remote, ancient
and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago,
for the children of Jacob to boast,
we have 'Abraham to our father,' when they had long lost
Abraham’s faith and spirit. That people contented themselves
under the shadow of Abraham’s great name,
while they repudiated the deeds
which made his name great.
Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done
all over this country to-day?
Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who
built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres
of the righteous?
Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the
price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and
souls of men shout — “We have Washington to our father.”
— Alas! that it should be so; yet so it is.
The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft-interred with their bones.
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? 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?
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 the 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 as an hart.'
But, such is not the state of the case. I say it
with a sad sense
of the 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 to-day?
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, lowering
up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty,
burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin!
I can to-day take
up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
'By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! 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 the 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, to-day, 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] 4th 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
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 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.
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 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 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 to-day, 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,
Solve them into radians sense of
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 employments 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 passed.
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
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 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 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.
Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers,
is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that
the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show
that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one
of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all
the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions
are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic.
In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth.
It is called (in contradistinction
to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave trade.” It is, probably, called so, too,
in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is
contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government,
as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of
the nation, as an execrable traffic. with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic.
To arrest it, to put an end to it,
this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. 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.
The duty to
extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY.
In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored
brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves
on the western coast of Africa! It
is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by
Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-
-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable
Behold the practical operation of this internal
slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America[n]
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. They inhabit all
our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and
crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of
these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and
bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to
the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be
sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers.
They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill.
Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who
drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on
his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance,
if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders
are bare to the scorching sun her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms.
See, too, that girl of thirteen,
weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn!
The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength;
suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the
discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously;
your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul!
And, what you heard was the sound the slate when?
The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe.
Her speed had faltered under the weight
of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on.
Follow the drove to New Orleans. 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.
See this drove sold and separated forever; and
never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that
scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness
a spectacle more fiendish and shocking.
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.
To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality.
When a child, my soul was often pierced with
a sense of its horrors.
I lived on
Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and
have watched from the wharves, the slave ships
in the Basin,
anchored from the shore,
with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting
for favorable winds
to waft them down the Chesapeake.
There was, at that time,
a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street,
by Austin Woldfolk. 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.
These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in
their manners.
Ever ready to drink,
to treat,
and to gamble.
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.
When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the
purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans.
From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night;
for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.
In the deep [darkness] of midnight,
I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps,
and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door.
The anguish of my boyish heart was intense;
and I was
off and console 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.
I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.
Fellow-citizens,
this murderous traffic is, to-day,
in active operation in this boasted
republic. . In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds
of dust raised on the highways of the South;
I see the bleeding footsteps;
I hear
the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way
to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be
sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked
off to the highest bidder. There
I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken,
to gratify the lust, caprice
and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men.
My soul sickens at the sight.
'Is this the land your Fathers loved,
[This] freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?'
But a still more inhuman, disgraceful,
and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an
act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has
been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form.
By that act, Mason and Dixon’s line has been obliterated;
New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and
sell men, women, and children as slaves remains no longer a mere
state institution, but is now an institution of
the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the
Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Where these
go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter.
Where these are, man is not sacred.
He is a bird for the sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human
ecrees, the liberty and person of every man are put
in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground
for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but
for men guilty of no crime.
Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport.
Your President, your Secretary of State, our lords, nobles,
and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a
duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do
this accursed thing.
Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years,
been hunted down and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains,
and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture.
Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread;
but of this, no account was made.
The right of the hunter
to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage,
and to all rights in this republic, the rights
of God included! For black men there
are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion.
The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime;
and bribes the judge who tries them.
An American judge gets ten dollars for every
victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he
fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this
hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black
man into the remorseless jaws of slavery!
His own testimony is nothing.
He can bring no witnesses for himself.
The minister of American justice is bound by
the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the
oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told.
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
man’s 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.
I doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass
and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. If any man in this assembly
thinks differently from me in this [manner], and feels
able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him
at any suitable time and place he may select.
I take this law to be one of the grossest
infringements of Christian Liberty,
and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind,
or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.
At the very moment
that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty,
and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences,
they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its
chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless
to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern
the “mint, anise, and cumin” — abridge the right to sing psalms,
to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion,
it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. 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. Further, if
this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added
to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters
would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and
heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown
by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland.
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.
It esteems sacrifice above mercy;
psalm-singing above right doing;
solemn meetings above practical righteousness.
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.
The Bible addresses all such persons as 'scribes,
Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin,
and have omitted the
weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.'
But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave,
it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark
of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters.
Many of its most eloquent
Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have
shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system.
They are taught that man may properly previously.
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!
welcome atheism!
welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines!
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! These
ministers make religion a cold and
flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor
bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave
the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive
form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants,
man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that
'pure and undefiled religion' which is from above, and which
is from above, and which is 'first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and
good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.'
But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud
above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants
and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there;
and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which
may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God
a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the
dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man.
All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land
and nation — a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of
inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. 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.
Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. 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. Yea! when ye make many prayers, I will
not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do
well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the
fatherless;
plead for the widow.'
The American church
is guilty,
when viewed in connection with
what it is doing to uphold slavery;
but it is superlatively guilty
when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery.
The sin of
which it is guilty is one of omission as well
as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every
man at all observant of the actual state
of the case
will receive as truth, when he
declared that 'There is no power out of the church
that could sustain slavery an hour
if it were not sustained in it.'
Let the religious press, the Sunday school, the conference meeting,
the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land
array their immense
powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds;
and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.
In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church,
to spare the ministry;
but how, we ask, could such a thing be done?
We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and
church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we
are compelled to fight or flee. 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?
As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared -
- men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning.
The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes
and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston,
the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter
denial of the authority of Him by whom they professed to be called to the ministry,
deliberately taught us, against the example or the
Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles,
they teach that we ought to obey man’s law before the law of God.
My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and
how such men can be supported, as the 'standing types and representatives
of Jesus Christ,' is a mystery
which I leave others to penetrate.
In speaking of the American
church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean
the great mass of the religious organizations of our land.
There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men
may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom
Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend
(Rev. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples;
and let me say further, that upon these men lies the duty to
inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal,
and to cheer us on in the great
mission of the slave’s redemption from his chains.
One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the
American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches
in England towards a similar movement in that country.
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. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious
question. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of
the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces,
the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety,
and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement
there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its
full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery
movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this
country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards
that movement. 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 (as embodied
in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support
and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen.
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.
You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor
them with banquets, greet them with ovations,
cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and
pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land
you advertise, hunt,
arrest, shoot
and kill.
You glory in your refinement and
your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous
and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation -
- a system begun in avarice,
supported in pride,
and perpetuated in cruelty.
You shed tears over fallen Hungary,
and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your
poets, statesmen and orators,
till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her
cause against her oppressors; but,
in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the
American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence,
and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make
those wrongs the subject of public discourse!
You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or
for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the
enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the
dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which,
in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your
bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax
on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned
farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country.
You profess to believe 'that, of one blood, God
made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,' and hath commanded
all men everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously
hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins
are not colored like your own. You declare, before the world, and
are understood by the world to declare, that
you 'hold these truths to be self evident, that
all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness;' and yet, you hold securely,
in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, 'is worse
than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,'
the seven part of the inhibitions and your country?
Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further
on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands
your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and
your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad;
it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation
of religion; it makes your name
a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth.
It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing
that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union.
It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement,
the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride;
it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a
curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it,
as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes.
Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up
in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your
youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from
you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and
destroy it forever!
But it is answered in reply to all
this, that precisely what I have now denounced is,
in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution
of the United States; that the right to hold and
to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the
illustrious Fathers of this Republic. Then, I dare to
affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before,
your fathers stooped, basely stooped
To palter with us in a double sense:
And keep the word of promise to the ear, But break it to the heart.
And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest
imposters that ever practiced on mankind.
This is
the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape.
But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of
the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe.
There is not time now to argue the constitutional question
at length - nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be
discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by
Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by
Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq.
These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly
vindicated
the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.
Fellow-citizens!
there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North
have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed
upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the
Constitution.
In that instrument I hold there is neither
warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing;
but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a
GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.
Read its preamble,
consider its purposes.
Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither.
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.
What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of
Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made?
Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the
proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established.
They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us,
can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law.
I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or
unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people.
I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion
of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to
use all honorable means
to make his opinion the prevailing one.
Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that
of a Frenchman. 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
and is meant for the home where unsophisticated understandings of
our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution
is the fundamental law, that which controls all others.
The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal
interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of
Senator Breese,
Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere
esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution.
I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in
a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.
Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and
I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it.
On the other hand
it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.
I have detained my audience entirely too long already.
At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give
this subject a full and fair discussion.
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.
'The arm of the Lord is not shortened,' and the doom of slavery is
certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.
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.
Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago.
No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round
in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time
was when such could be done.
Long established customs of
hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work
with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by
the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness.
But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind.
Walled cities and empires have become
unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates
of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes
its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth.
Wind, steam, and lightning
are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations
together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is
comparatively annihilated.
Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other.
The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls
in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire,
the mystery of ages, is being solved.
The fiat of the Almighty,
“Let there be Light,”
has not yet spent its force.
No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport
or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.
The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen,
in contrast with nature.
Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment.
'Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.'
In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and
let every heart join in saying it:
'God speed the year of jubilee / The wide world o’er /When from their
galling chains set free, / Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee, /
And wear the yoke of tyranny / Like brutes no more. /That year will
come, and freedom’s reign, / To man his plundered fights again / Restore. /
God speed the day when human blood /
Shall cease to flow! / In every clime be understood, / The claims of human
brotherhood, / And each return for evil, good, / Not blow for blow; /That
day will come all feuds to end. /
And change into a faithful friend / Each foe. /
God speed the hour, the glorious hour, / When none on
earth / Shall exercise a lordly power, / Nor in a tyrant’s presence
cower; / But all to manhood’s stature tower, / By equal
birth! / That hour will come, to each, to all, / And from his prison-
-house, the thrall / Go forth. / Until that year, day, hour, arrive, /
With head, and heart, and hand
I’ll strive, / To break the rod, and rend the gyve, /
The spoiler of his prey deprive — / So witness Heaven! /
And never from my chosen post, / Whate’er the peril or the cost, / Be driven.