ICHIGA CITIZE
JU Y 7 • ,1 1
. lave
Frederick Douglass was invited by the Rochester (New
York) Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society to give an oration in
Corinthian Hall on the Fourth of July, 1852. He agreed,
but not on that date; on the day after Independence Day,
staunchly antislavery Rochester crowded into the hall to
hear what came to be know Frederick Douglass's
Fifth of July speech- "Wh t to the Slave Is.the Fourth
o/July?" .
Douglass delivered this speech almost 1 0 years before ..
the outbreak of the Civil War. His prophesy of the war
was as accurate .as his vision of America 140 years later
was clear. Following are excerpts from the speech.
his Fourth (of) July, is yours, not mine. You may
rejoice, I must mourn. To. drag a man in fetters
into the grand Illuminatedtemple of liberty, and call
upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were in­
human mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean,
citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?" ,
"Would you have me argue that man is entitled to his
Uberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body?
You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrong­
fulness of slavery? Is that a question for epublicans?
.• Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to
which, the people of the orth have allowed themselves
to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro­
slavery character of the Constitution. n that instru­
ment I hold there is no' warrant, license, nor sanction of
the hateful thing; but,· terpreted as it ought to be In-
the
ourth
terpreted, the Constitution is a GLORI US LIBERTY
DOCUMENT ...
he 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 ... From the
round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening
clouds may be seen, heavy billows, like mountains in
the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of
flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and
all is lost. Cling to this day - cling to it, and to its
principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner
to a spar at midnight.. . . '
"There is consolation in the thought that America is
young, Greatstreams are not easily turned from chan- ,
nels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may some­
times 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 accumu­
lated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, how­
ever, 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 be- .
hind butthe withered branch, and the unsightly rock,
to howl in abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of
departed glory.
"As with rivers so with nations. "