It's not luck that earned me two sunrises today - it's motivation to run and pure psych to climb.
Anyway, most everyone I know is celebrating Independence Day so I hope you'll take time to read
- Frederick Douglass' speech from 1852. It's long but I copied and pasted it to the end of this post. You don't have to read it today, but I hope you'll take time to at some point soon. It's still timely. Misa and John-Pio got to hear it today and I'm hopeful they'll start to think critically about holidays and special events that get a lot of hype. I'm not down on the hype or celebrations - I just want my kids and y'all to take note of celebrating US nationalism from the race-class position. There's also this other piece that came across my Inbox that's worth reading for perspective and from the colonial racial neo-liberalism that is under the guise of Black pride. Check it here - it's called
I'm interested in hearing what you think about both.
So I climbed a lot this past week. Tuesday was stellar with my lil best girl Katie. No need for an emoticon of love and support to rep our morning - just our usual date-pic. If it weren't for her I wouldn't have sent my project. Good friction and anticipation of bakery items made it go fast!
Went back to Lake with Lisa and watched her work her way up Earth Mechanics - she threw a heel hook on the move I had to dead-point and was strong and focused. And fun to hang out with and talk to about life and family and education and work.
Took advantage of another beautiful morning and went up with Brad, Kael, and Sam to the Lake. We worked the problems on the Stache boulder AKA Dog Walk boulder and made progress. Man I don't know if I'll ever send Moo Stache, but the middle line, Magnum PI actually seems like it'll go for all of us. Here's what it looked like out there today - lots of bantering coupled with ideas of bloody mary's when we lost ground. Thankfully someone was always there to pick it back up.
A generous dose of sunrises, thinking, and rock. I have good people in my life. And as promised, here is the speech by Frederick Douglass. I hope you all can appreciate it.
The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro
by Frederick Douglass
A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852
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 school houses, avails me nothing on the present
occasion.
The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a
Fourth of July Oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the
common way, for me. 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 he 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 Fourth of July. It is the
birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom.
This, to you, as 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. l 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 rulers.
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 2nd 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,
there fore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is
the first great fact in your nation's history-the very ringbolt 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 ringbolt 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 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.
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 "settIed" 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 defence. Mark them! Fully
appreciating the hardships 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 super-structure, 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-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, un folded 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 po etry 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
sepulchers 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 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 fa thers, 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, 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 ac knowledge 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 con sent 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 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, 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.
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 Jaws 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 them selves on the
western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so
much execration is poured out by Americans upon all those engaged in the
foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the
states pass with out 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 American 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-curdling 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 centre 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 this
drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses;
see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shock ing
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 has 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 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 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 law-makers 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 is neither law nor justice, humanity nor
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 the case of a man's liberty, to hear only his accusers!
In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of
administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenceless,
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 nor
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 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 so licit 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, im plies 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 ofÝ 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 throne 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 with out 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 oblations; 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 its 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 they professed to be called to the
ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example of the Hebrews,
and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, that we ought to obey
man's law before the law of God.2
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 Eng land 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 re stored 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, the 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
oppression in 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 the oppressor; 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 "hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their
Creator with certain in alienable 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 pretense, 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 impostors that ever practised 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 Gerrit 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 gate way? 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 slaveholding instrument, why neither
slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can any where 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 tract 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, commonsense 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 our
fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tells 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 rights 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.
