Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon
to speak here today? 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
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 today? 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
(Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the
breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the
mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday,
are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach
them. If I do forget, if I do not 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 here, 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 Fourth 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
slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some 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
slave-holders 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
these same crimes will subject a white man to 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 and write. When you can point to any
such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent
to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when
the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of
the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish
the slave from a brute, then I will 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 plowing, 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 we are engaged in all the enterprises
common to other men — digging gold in California, capturing the whale
in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living,
moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands,
wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the
Christian 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 understand?
How should I look today 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 who 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 past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is
needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I
would today 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
denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day
that reveals to him more than all other days of 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 shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock;
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 of the
earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people
of these United States at this very hour.
Go 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.
