REBEL VOICES

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Friends and Fellow Citizens. He who could address this audience without a qualing sensation has stronger nerves than I do. 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. The placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July Oration. The fact is, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation from which I escaped is considerable. That I am here today is a matter of astonishment.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were great men great enough to give frame to a great age. 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 believed in order, but not in the order of tyranny. You may well cherish the memory of such men. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. 

Fellow Citizens, allow me to ask why am I called upon to speak here today. What have I to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of freedom embodied in that Declaration extended to us?

Your 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 and prosperity bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. To drag a man in fetters into the temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems is sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? 

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, I would 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 conscience of the nation must be roused, the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed, and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him the gross injustice and cruelty 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, empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns are to him, mere bombast, fraud, impiety, and hypocrisy a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages!