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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 frame 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....
...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 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 light and
healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth 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, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of
the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable 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, 0 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 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, an 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 acknowledgment 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 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 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 Amercans,
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
passed.
At a
time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I
the ability, and could 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 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 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....
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