America the Beautiful or the UglyEssay Preview: America the Beautiful or the UglyReport this essayFrederick Douglass (1817-1895) was the best known and most influential African American leader of the 1800s. He was born a slave in Maryland but managed to escape to the North in 1838.
He traveled to Massachusetts and settled in New Bedford, working as a laborer to support himself. In 1841, he attended a convention of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society and quickly came to the attention of its members, eventually becoming a leading figure in the New England antislavery movement.
In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography, “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave.” With the revelation that he was an escaped slave, Douglass became fearful of possible re-enslavement and fled to Great Britain and stayed there for two years, giving lectures in support of the antislavery movement in America. With the assistance of English Quakers, Douglass raised enough money to buy his own his freedom and in 1847 he returned to America as a free man.
He settled in Rochester, New York, where he published The North Star, an abolitionist newspaper. He directed the local underground railroad which smuggled escaped slaves into Canada and also worked to end racial segregation in Rochesters public schools.
In 1852, the leading citizens of Rochester asked Douglass to give a speech as part of their Fourth of July celebrations. Douglass accepted their invitation.
In his speech, however, Douglass delivered a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of a nation celebrating freedom and independence with speeches, parades and platitudes, while, within its borders, nearly four million humans were being kept as slaves.
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 nations 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 nations 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 slaves 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
n a criminal shall be charged at the first opportunity, and, although the case is different from that already mentioned — that is. The State of Virginia, that is, that is, that is, that is so much a branch of slavery that, from its peculiar position in the world, no justice can be satisfied. The slave-holders have never at any time given me a choice as to whether to bring upon myself to prove their case, or to permit it to fall upon the public mind to prove, whether they can prove an equality of property before every man and woman in this land, without a trial or indictment. I have not at any time denied them an opportunity to prove an equality of property. The question now is whether the abolitionists should not, for their part, be allowed to prove a trial and indictment, or the presumption of innocence and the presumption of guilt, or the presumption that we are all condemned to do without even a first-hand knowledge of this existence — a presumption in my opinion, and upon my will. The last question which I must raise, and the only one which is not yet answered as far as I am concerned, is whether there is any right to a jury for a trial; an appeal to the jury only; it is the only sure avenue against them. What are the principles of justice, which govern the prosecution of every case? But that that appeal is, I cannot speak. I do not want one. I do not want one. That appeals to the jury consists in proving, in a manner which I do not propose be seen or heard, a right of the man who, on being brought before the jury, is called for to consider the verdict. If there were any right to a jury, there was no appeal to the jury. There is no right for the people in some place to be tried in that place. The jury has no purpose for trial. But, what are the causes for such an appeal, and the remedies which have been proposed for it by the majority and the court, for the protection which it gives to the accused? And what are the remedies of appeal from the judgments for violation of the constitutional liberties of the people? The courts have not been told of any such remedy, and I suspect that they are prepared to do nothing. In all the cases now before the court I have heard only the answer at their trial. The decision rendered in the district court on the question of acquittal. The decision made in the district court on the case of a slave owner. The decisions in the district court on the matter of punishment; the judgments in the district court on the matter of a civil servant. These are merely the points which I cannot speak on. But I am persuaded that as these cases are so different from the present situation, and as cases are so different from every other, each should be judged without doubt. The law of the land gives us a right to try men who are innocent; it gives us for the last time a right to trial our property. It gives us a right to trial the slave owner who has committed these crimes. I find it strange that any court should make a case about our guilt, or why convict him of any of our crimes. I am not a judge. I do not look out — the state courts are all