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IN THE NAME OF OUTRAGED HUMANITY -
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
The Hypocrisy of American Slavery
It follows the full transcript of
Frederick Douglass' What to the Slave is the
Fourth of July? address, also called The Hypocrisy of
American Slavery speech, delivered in the Corinthian
Hall at Rochester, New York - July 5, 1852.
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Mr. President,
Friends and Fellow Citizens: |
He who could
address this audience without a quailing
sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do
not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker
before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with
greater distrust of my ability, than 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 would much misrepresent me. The
little experience I have had in addressing
public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails
me nothing on the present occasion.
The papers and placards say, that I am to
deliver a 4th [of] July oration. This certainly
sounds large, and out of the 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 to-day 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 with 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 purpose of this celebration, is
the 4th 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 act, and that
day.
This celebration also marks the beginning
of another year of your national life; and
reminds you that the Republic of America is now
76 years old.
I am glad, fellow-citizens, that
your nation is so young. Seventy-six years,
though a good old age for a man, is but a mere
speck in the life of a nation. Three score years
and ten is the allotted time for individual men;
but nations number their 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 disastrous 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 and of truth,
will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the
nation older, the patriot’s heart might be
sadder, and the 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 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 English 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 oppressive, 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 the wrong to be 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 the then dangerous thought
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 whose
transparency is at 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 will
concede 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, and stretched away in
strength into the distant future. 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
deep the corner-stone of 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 interests 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 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, their 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 bum 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 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
past.
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.
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. 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 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! 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 still 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 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. 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,
The 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 & 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
decrees, 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, your 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 matter, 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 cummin"—abridge the
fight 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 cummin, 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 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!
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 "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 pulpit, 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 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 the professed to he 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 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[ly]
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 or 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 bodyguards 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 three-penny 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 "hotel 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," a
seventh part of the inhabitants of 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
by 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 fight 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 fight, 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 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.
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