(View as Adobe Acrobat .pdf)
ORATION, DELIVERED
IN CORINTHIAN HALL, ROCHESTER, BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JULY 5TH, 1852.
Published by Request
ROCHESTER: PRINTED BY LEE, MANN & CO., AMERICAN BUILDING.
1852.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS ESQ.:
Dear Sir-The Ladies of the "Rochester Anti
Slavery Sewing Society," desire me to return you their most sincere
thanks for the eloquent and able address delivered in Corinthian Hall, on
the 5th of July. Anticipating its speedy publication in Pamphlet form, they
request that you will furnish them with one hundred copies for
distribution:
In behalf of the
Society,
SUSAN F. PORTER,
President.
ORATION.
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 4th 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 be overcome
in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am
here today, 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 clay, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the
signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act 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 you national career, still ling
ering 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 un fashionable 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 Pharoah 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 2d of July,
1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease,
and the worshippers 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 today 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 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 boltdrawn, 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 coining 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 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 penants 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--a 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 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 hadcheap! will
be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans, if
I say I think the Americans can 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!
THE PRESENT.
My business, if I
have any here today, 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 today? 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."-A las! 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 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. Forwho 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 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
whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the
Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can today take up
the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
" By the rivers
of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We
hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they
that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us
required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we
sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let
my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth."
Fellow citizens;
above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!
whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, 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 profes sions 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 abo litionists 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 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, 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 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
hillside, 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 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, 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 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 cruelty to
which lie 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 every day
practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting
barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE.
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.
Every-where, 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 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-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 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 shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and
separated for ever; 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 Or-leans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually
driven in the darkness of night; for since the anti-slavery 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 pitious 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 sympathised 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 be-come as Virginia; and the power to
hold, hunt, and sell men, women and childreH, 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 formen. 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 allrights in this republic, the rights of God
included! For black men there are neither law, 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 bribes, and
are bound, in deciding in 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.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
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 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 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."
THE CHURCH RESPONSIBLE.
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 p r eached 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, andthugs. It is not that "pare 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 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 hatest. 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 they professed to be called to
the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example of 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.
RELIGION IN ENGLAND AND RELIGION IN AMERICA.
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
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 meretools 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 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 "h old 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 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!
THE CONSTITUTION.
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 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 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, legallydrawn
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 un. constitutionality 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. With out 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.Afric 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.
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.
* Rev. R. R.
Raymond.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment