"What To The Slave
Is The 4th Of July?"
FREDERICK DOUGLASS SPEECH, 1852
This is a Fourth of July classic. I like posting
this almost every Fourth of July. It gives us time to think about our country
for real. -SJ Otto
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 truthfullyreturned
to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and
delightful. For who 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."
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