"What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?" is Frederick Douglass' masterwork of oration, delivered on 5 July 1852 at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Also sometimes given as "What, to the Slave, is your Fourth of July?", the piece has long been recognized as among the greatest speeches in American history and what scholar David W. Blight calls "the rhetorical masterpiece of American abolitionism" (230).
Douglass was invited to give a Fourth of July speech that year by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, specifically by one of its leaders, Julia Griffiths, the English abolitionist who would also inspire Douglass to write and publish his novella The Heroic Slave (1853), a fictional account of the Creole Mutiny of 1841.
The event was originally set for 4 July 1852, but Douglass insisted it be moved to 5 July because, in the Black community, the Fourth of July had become a day of mourning as it was a date associated with widespread slave auctions throughout the South, held as part of the nation's celebration of independence. Griffiths and the others agreed to Douglass' demand out of respect for his feelings but also because the Fourth fell on a Sunday that year, a day when many did not participate in social events outside of church. The speech was therefore given on Monday, 5 July 1852.
It was an immediate sensation. Almost 600 people were in attendance, and, afterwards, Douglass "had it printed in bulk and sold it in his paper as well as out on the lecture circuit at fifty cents per copy or $6 per hundred" (Blight, 229). It became a bestseller, remains among the most popular of Douglass' works, and continues to be recited today, most often by civil rights activists, around the Fourth of July.
American Ideals & Slavery
The speech highlights the discrepancy between the ideals upon which the United States was founded and its persistent practice and defense of chattel slavery. Douglass had been born a slave in Maryland circa 1818, escaped to New York in 1838, and, by 1852, was the most popular speaker on the abolitionist lecture circuit as well as a bestselling author due to his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). He had also already established his anti-slavery newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York, worked with the Underground Railroad, and had lectured in Ireland and Great Britain between 1845 and 1847.
By the time of "What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?" he was a celebrity speaker and author whose views on slavery and the hypocrisy that supported it were well-known. His audience in July 1852 would have come to expect, generally, what his speech would focus on – and Douglass did not disappoint – but in "What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?" he developed many of his earlier arguments more fully and crafted an abolitionist opus whose points resonate as powerfully today as when the speech was first given.
Douglass begins by praising the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence before moving to his claim that the past is meaningless unless its lessons are applied to the present. America, he notes, was founded on principles of liberty and justice for all people, and yet that same country supports, defends, and prospers from slavery, condemning the international slave trade while regularly engaging in the same domestically.
The speech was given two years after the US Congress had passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required citizens of any state in the Union to assist in the capture and re-enslavement of freedom seekers who had fled captivity. Douglass cites this legislation at length as a glaring example of how America has failed to live up to the vision of its founding.
Citing the US Constitution as a "glorious liberty document," Douglass dismisses the argument that it, in any way, supports slavery and points out that it, in fact, opposes the practice. As long as people are legally denied their basic human rights in America, he argues, the United States fails to honor its Constitution and cannot be said to be living up to its original vision.
Throughout the speech, Douglass hints at – and in some passages predicts – the inevitability of the American Civil War, claiming that the nation cannot continue in its present division between slave states and free states while pretending to uphold universal principles of liberty. Even so, he also presents a hopeful vision at points, and especially toward the conclusion of the piece, that America will learn from its past – as well as the history of other nations – to fully embrace and live the ideals it was founded upon.
Text
The following excerpt is taken from Great Speeches by Frederick Douglass, edited by James Daley, Dover Publications, 2013. The full text of the speech, as given on the site Black Past, appears below in the bibliography and External Links. The following begins over halfway through the text. Omissions are indicated by ellipses.
…What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) "the internal slave trade." It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy.
It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it is admitted even by our doctors of divinity. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable…
But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason & Dixon's line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States.
The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman's gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime.
Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles and ecclesiastics enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moment's warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included!
For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, 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 in the case of a man's liberty, to hear only his accusers!...
Fellow-citizens! There is no matter in respect to which the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.
Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.
What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a 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…
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…
