WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY? By Frederick Douglass
Extract from an Oration, at Rochester, July 5, 1852
Fellow-Citizens-Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? 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 l, 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?
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 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 to-day?...
Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains,
heavy and grievous yesterday, are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach
them. If l 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. l 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 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.
According to Douglass, who is unable to experience the joy of the celebration?