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“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
Frederick Douglass
July 05, 1852
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“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea!
we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps
upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there,
they that carried us away captive, required of us a
song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth,
saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How can we
sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget
thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Mr. President, Friends and
Fellow Citizens:
He
who could address this audience without a quailing
sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. 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. A
feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the
exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task
before me is one which requires much previous
thought and study for its proper performance. I know
that apologies of this sort are generally considered
flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will
not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my
appearance would much misrepresent me. The little
experience I have had in addressing public meetings,
in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the
present occasion.
The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a
4th [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large,
and out of the common way, for it is true that I
have often had the privilege to speak in this
beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me
with their presence. But neither their familiar
faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of
Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from
embarrassment.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance
between this platform and the slave plantation, from
which I escaped, is considerable — and the
difficulties to be overcome in getting from the
latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I
am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment
as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be
surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no
elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any
high sounding exordium. With little experience and
with less learning, I have been able to throw my
thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and
trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I
will proceed to lay them before you.
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the
4th of July. It is the birthday of your National
Independence, and of your political freedom. This,
to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated
people of God. It carries your minds back to the
day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and
to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with
that act, and that day. This celebration also marks
the beginning of another year of your national life;
and reminds you that the Republic of America is now
76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your
nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good
old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life
of a nation. Three score years and ten is the
allotted time for individual men; but nations number
their years by thousands. According to this fact,
you are, even now, only in the beginning of your
national career, still lingering in the period of
childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is
hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under
the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The
eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes,
portending disastrous times; but his heart may well
beat lighter at the thought that America is young,
and that she is still in the impressible stage of
her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of
wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give
direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the
patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s
brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom,
and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There
is consolation in the thought that America is young.
Great streams are not easily turned from channels,
worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes
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 accumulated wealth of years of toil and
hardship. They, however, 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 behind but the withered
branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the
abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory.
As with rivers so with nations.
Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at
length on the associations that cluster about this
day. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago,
the people of this country were British subjects.
The style and title of your “sovereign people” (in
which you now glory) was not then born. You were
under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the
English Government as the home government; and
England as the fatherland. This home government, you
know, although a considerable distance from your
home, did, in the exercise of its parental
prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children,
such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its
mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.
But, your fathers, who had not adopted the
fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility
of government, and the absolute character of its
acts, presumed to differ from the home government in
respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of
those burdens and restraints. They went so far in
their excitement as to pronounce the measures of
government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and
altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted
to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my
opinion of those measures fully accords with that of
your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my
part would not be worth much to anybody. It would,
certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might
have taken, had I lived during the great controversy
of 1776. To say now that America was right, and
England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can
say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave,
can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England
towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to
do so; but there was a time when to pronounce
against England, and in favor of the cause of the
colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so were
accounted in their day, plotters of mischief,
agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with
the right, against the wrong, with the weak against
the strong, and with the oppressed against the
oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which,
of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The
cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory
in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.
Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by
the home government, your fathers, like men of
honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought
redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did
so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner.
Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This,
however, did not answer the purpose. They saw
themselves treated with sovereign indifference,
coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were
not the men to look back.
As
the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship
is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your
fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling
blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best
of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the
loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its
support. But, with that blindness which seems to be
the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since
Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea,
the British Government persisted in the exactions
complained of.
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted
now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is
wholly lost on our present ruler.
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were
wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became
restive under this treatment. They felt themselves
the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in
their colonial capacity. With brave men there is
always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea
of a total separation of the colonies from the crown
was born! It was a startling idea, much more so,
than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The
timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of
that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by
it.
Such people lived then, had lived before, and will,
probably, ever have a place on this planet; and
their course, in respect to any great change, (no
matter how great the good to be attained, or the
wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with
as much precision as can be the course of the stars.
They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper
change! Of this sort of change they are always
strongly in favor.
These people were called Tories in the days of your
fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the
same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a
somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find
in our papers, applied to some of our old
politicians.
Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was
earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and
affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming
and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country
with it.
On
the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress,
to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the
worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea
with all the authority of national sanction. They
did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom
hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose
transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh
your minds and help my story if I read it.
“Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of
right, ought to be free and Independent States; that
they are absolved from all allegiance to the British
Crown; and that all political connection between
them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to
be, dissolved.”
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution.
They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of
their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you,
therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary.
The 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.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude,
prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual
remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of
Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your
nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The
principles contained in that instrument are saving
principles. Stand by those principles, be true to
them on all occasions, in all places, against all
foes, and at whatever cost.
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.
The coming into being of a nation, in any
circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides
general considerations, there were peculiar
circumstances which make the advent of this republic
an event of special attractiveness.
The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple,
dignified and sublime.
The population of the country, at the time, stood at
the insignificant number of three millions. The
country was poor in the munitions of war. The
population was weak and scattered, and the country a
wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of
concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither
steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order
and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was
a journey of many days. Under these, and innumerable
other disadvantages, your fathers declared for
liberty and independence and triumphed.
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the
fathers of this republic. The signers of the
Declaration of Independence were brave men. They
were great men too — great enough to give fame to a
great age. It does not often happen to a nation to
raise, at one time, such a number of truly great
men. The point from which I am compelled to view
them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet
I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less
than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and
heroes, and for the good they did, and the
principles they contended for, I will unite with you
to honor their memory.
They loved their country better than their own
private interests; and, though this is not the
highest form of human excellence, all will concede
that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is
exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will,
intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is
a man whom it is not in human nature to despise.
Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and
their sacred honor, on the cause of their country.
In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of
all other interests.
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 showed forbearance; but that they
knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in
the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was
“settled” that was not right. With them, justice,
liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and
oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such
men. They were great in their day and generation.
Their solid manhood stands out the more as we
contrast it with these degenerate times.
How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all
their movements! How unlike the politicians of an
hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing
moment, and stretched away in strength into the
distant future. They seized upon eternal principles,
and set a glorious example in their defense. Mark
them!
Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered,
firmly believing in the right of their cause,
honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking
world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest
their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn
responsibility they were about to assume, wisely
measuring the terrible odds against them, your
fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most
deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious
patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great
principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the
corner-stone of the national superstructure, which
has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.
Of
this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary.
Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous
enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on
the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed.
Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this
day. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum
unite their accents with the ascending peal of a
thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are
sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day;
while the quick martial tramp of a great and
multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills,
valleys and mountains of a vast continent, bespeak
the occasion one of thrilling and universal interest
— a nation’s jubilee.
Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into
the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of
you understand them better than I do. You could
instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of
knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper
interest than your speaker. The causes which led to
the separation of the colonies from the British
crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all
been taught in your common schools, narrated at your
firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered
from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to
you as household words. They form the staple of your
national poetry and eloquence.
I
remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are
remarkably familiar with all facts which make in
their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a
national trait — perhaps a national weakness. It is
a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for
the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap!
will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged
with slandering Americans, if I say I think the
American side of any question may be safely left in
American hands.
I
leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to
other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly
descended will be less likely to be disputed than
mine!
My
business, if I have any here to-day, is with the
present. The accepted time with God and his cause is
the ever-living now.
Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its
dead;
Act, act in the living
present,
Heart within, and God
overhead.
We
have to do with the past only as we can make it
useful to the present and to the future. To all
inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be
gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the
time, the important time. Your fathers have lived,
died, and have done their work, and have done much
of it well. You live and must die, and you must do
your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s
share in the labor of your fathers, unless your
children are to be blest by your labors. You have no
right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of
your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith
tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and
virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly
or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a
doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and
remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable,
hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to
boast, we have “Abraham to our father,” when they
had long lost Abraham’s faith and spirit. That
people contented themselves under the shadow of
Abraham’s great name, while they repudiated the
deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you
that a similar thing is being done all over this
country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are
not the only people who built the tombs of the
prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the
righteous? Washington could not die till he had
broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is
built up by the price of human blood, and the
traders in the bodies and souls of men shout — “We
have Washington to our father.” — Alas! that it
should be so; yet so it is.
The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is
oft-interred with their bones.
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, 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
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 truthfully returned 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.”
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? If so, there is a
parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that
it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation
whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown
down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that
nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up
the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten
people!
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea!
we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps
upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there,
they that carried us away captive, required of us a
song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth,
saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we
sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget
thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
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 jubilee shouts that
reach them. If I 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. I 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 4th 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.
America is false to the past, false to the present,
and solemnly binds herself to be false to the
future. Standing with God and the crushed and
bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name
of humanity which is outraged, in the name of
liberty which is fettered, in the name of the
constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded
and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to
denounce, with all the emphasis I can command,
everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the
great sin and shame of America! “I will not
equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the
severest language I can command; and yet not one
word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is
not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a
slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it
is just in this circumstance that you and your
brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable
impression on the public mind. Would you argue more,
and denounce less, would you persuade more, and
rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to
succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is
nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery
creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the
subject do the people of this country need light?
Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man?
That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it.
The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the
enactment of laws for their government. They
acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the
part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in
the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a
black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject
him to the punishment of death; while only two of
the same crimes will subject a white man to the like
punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement
that the slave is a moral, intellectual and
responsible being? The manhood of the slave is
conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern
statute books are covered with enactments
forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the
teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you
can point to any such laws, in reference to the
beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the
manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets,
when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your
hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles
that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave
from a brute, then will I argue with you that the
slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal
manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing
that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping,
using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting
houses, constructing bridges, building ships,
working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and
gold; that, while we are reading, writing and
cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and
secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors,
ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and
teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner
of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in
California, capturing the whale in the Pacific,
feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living,
moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in
families as husbands, wives and children, and, above
all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God,
and looking hopefully for life and immortality
beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that
we are men!
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to
liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own
body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the
wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for
Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of
logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with
great difficulty, involving a doubtful application
of the principle of justice, hard to be understood?
How should I look to-day, in the presence of
Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to
show that men have a natural right to freedom?
speaking of it relatively, and positively,
negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to
make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to
your understanding. — There is not a man beneath the
canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is
wrong for him.
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men
brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them
without wages, to keep them ignorant of their
relations to their fellow men, to beat them with
sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load
their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to
sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to
knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to
starve them into obedience and submission to their
masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with
blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I
will not. I have better employments for my time and
strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery
is not divine; that God did not establish it; that
our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is
blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman,
cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a
proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time
for such argument is passed.
At
a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing
argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could
I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, 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 feeling of
the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the
nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation
must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must
be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must
be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I
answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all
other days in the year, 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 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.
Behold the practical operation of this internal
slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by
American politics and America religion. Here you
will see men and women reared like swine for the
market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show
you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern
States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the
highways of the nation, with droves of human stock.
You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed
with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company
of a hundred men, women, and children, from the
Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These
wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots,
to suit purchasers. They are food for the
cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the
sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the
inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage
yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on
his affrighted captives! There, see the old man,
with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you
please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are
bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling
on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that
girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she
thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn!
The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly
consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick
snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters
clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your
ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have
torn its way to the center of your soul! The crack
you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the
scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with
the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of
her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder
tells her to move on. Follow the drove to New
Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like
horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally
exposed to the shocking gaze of American
slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated
forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that
arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me
citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a
spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is
but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it
exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the
United States.
I
was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the
American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a
child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its
horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point,
Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the
slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore,
with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for
favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake.
There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at
the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His
agents were sent into every town and county in
Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the
papers, and on flaming “hand-bills,” headed CASH FOR
NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men,
and very captivating in their manners. Ever ready to
drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a
slave has depended upon the turn of a single card;
and many a child has been snatched from the arms of
its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal
drunkenness.
The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens,
and drive them, chained, to the general depot at
Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been
collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose
of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New
Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are
usually driven in the darkness of night; for since
the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is
observed.
In
the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been
often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the
piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our
door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense;
and I was often consoled, when speaking to my
mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the
custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the
rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. I
was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my
horror.
Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day,
in active operation in this boasted republic. In the
solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised
on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding
footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered
humanity, on the way to the slave-markets, where the
victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and
swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I
see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify
the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and
sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.
Is
this the land your Fathers loved,
The freedom which they
toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon
they moved?
Are these the graves they
slumber in?
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 and
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, our 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, not 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, hear only his accusers!
In
glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard
of the forms of administering law, in cunning
arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in
diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands
alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I
doubt if there be another nation on the globe,
having the brass and the baseness to put such a law
on the statute-book. If any man in this assembly
thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels
able to disprove my statements, I will gladly
confront him at any suitable time and place he may
select.
I
take this law to be one of the grossest
infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the
churches and ministers of our country were not
stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they,
too, would so regard it.
At
the very moment that they are thanking God for the
enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for
the right to worship God according to the dictates
of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in
respect to a law which robs religion of its chief
significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a
world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the
“mint, anise, and cumin” — abridge the right to sing
psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in
any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be
smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A
general shout would go up from the church, demanding
repeal, repeal, instant repeal! — And it would go
hard with that politician who presumed to solicit
the votes of the people without inscribing this
motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were
not complied with, another Scotland would be added
to the history of religious liberty, and the stern
old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A
John Knox would be seen at every church door, and
heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no
more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the
beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland.
The fact that the church of our country, (with
fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the
Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against
religious liberty, implies that that church regards
religion simply as a form of worship, an empty
ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring
active benevolence, justice, love and good will
towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy;
psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings
above practical righteousness. A worship that can be
conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to
the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing
to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law
forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a
blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such
persons as “scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay
tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted
the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy
and faith.”
But the church of this country is not only
indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually
takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself
the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of
American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent
Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church,
have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and
the Bible to the whole slave system. They have
taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the
relation of master and slave is ordained of God;
that to send back an escaped bondman to his master
is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord
Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed
off upon the world for Christianity.
For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity!
welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to
the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They
convert the very name of religion into an engine of
tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm
more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel
writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke,
put together, have done! These ministers make
religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having
neither principles of right action, nor bowels of
compassion. They strip the love of God of its
beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge,
horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for
oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is
not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from
above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable,
easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits,
without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” But a
religion which favors the rich against the poor;
which exalts the proud above the humble; which
divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and
slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there;
and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion
which may be professed and enjoyed by all the
robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a
respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the
race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of
the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be
true of the popular church, and the popular worship
of our land and nation — a religion, a church, and a
worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom,
we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of
God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church
might be well addressed, “Bring no more vain
ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the
new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I
cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn
meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my
soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to
bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I
will hide mine eyes from you. Yea! when ye make many
prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF
BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek
judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the
fatherless; plead for the widow.”
The American church is guilty, when viewed in
connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery;
but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in
connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The
sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well
as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the
common sense of every man at all observant of the
actual state of the case will receive as truth, when
he declared that “There is no power out of the
church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it
were not sustained in it.”
Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday
school, the conference meeting, the great
ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract
associations of the land array their immense powers
against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole
system of crime and blood would be scattered to the
winds; and that they do not do this involves them in
the most awful responsibility of which the mind can
conceive.
In
prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have
been asked to spare the church, to spare the
ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be
done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for
the redemption of the slave, by the church and
ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against
us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. From what
quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so
deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as
from the Northern pulpit? As the champions of
oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have
appeared — men, honored for their so-called piety,
and their real learning. The Lords of Buffalo, the
Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the
Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and
Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and
other great religious lights of the land have, in
utter denial of the authority of Him by whom they
professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately
taught us, against the example or the Hebrews and
against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teach
that we ought to obey man’s law before the law of
God.
My
spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men
can be supported, as the “standing types and
representatives of Jesus Christ,” is a mystery which
I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the
American church, however, let it be distinctly
understood that I mean the great mass of the
religious organizations of our land. There are
exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble
men may be found, scattered all over these Northern
States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn,
Samuel J. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend
(Rev. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining
examples; and let me say further, that upon these
men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high
religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the
great mission of the slave’s redemption from his
chains.
One is struck with the difference between the
attitude of the American church towards the
anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the
churches in England towards a similar movement in
that country. There, the church, true to its mission
of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the
condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound
up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored
him to his liberty. There, the question of
emancipation was a high religious question. It was
demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to
the law of the living God. The Sharps, the
Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and
Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for
their piety, and for their philanthropy. The
anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church
movement, for the reason that the church took its
full share in prosecuting that movement: and the
anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to
be an anti-church movement, when the church of this
country shall assume a favorable, instead of a
hostile position towards that movement. Americans!
your republican politics, not less than your
republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent.
You boast of your love of liberty, your superior
civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the
whole political power of the nation (as embodied in
the two great political parties), is solemnly
pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of
three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your
anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia
and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic
institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the
mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of
Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores
fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with
banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them,
toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out
your money to them like water; but the fugitives
from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest,
shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and
your universal education yet you maintain a system
as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the
character of a nation — a system begun in avarice,
supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You
shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad
story of her wrongs the theme of your poets,
statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are
ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against
her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand
wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the
strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of
the nation who dares to make those wrongs the
subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at
the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland;
but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of
liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse
eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain
a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma
upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of
British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on
tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing
from the grasp of the black laborers of your
country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood,
God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of
all the earth,” and hath commanded all men,
everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously
hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose
skins are not colored like your own. You declare,
before the world, and are understood by the world to
declare, that you “hold these truths to be self
evident, that all men are created equal; and are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness;” and yet, you hold
securely, in a bondage which, according to your own
Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which
your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh
part of the inhabitants of your country.
Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your
national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery
in this country brands your republicanism as a sham,
your humanity as a base pretence, and your
Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power
abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It
saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name
a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is
the antagonistic force in your government, the only
thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your
Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of
improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters
pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it
shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that
supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were
the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned!
be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your
nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at
the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the
love of God, tear away, and fling from you the
hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty
millions crush and destroy it forever!
But it is answered in reply to all this, that
precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact,
guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the
United States; that the right to hold and to hunt
slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the
illustrious Fathers of this Republic.
Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have
said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped
To
palter with us in a double sense:
And keep the word of
promise to the ear,
But break it to the heart.
And instead of being the honest men I have before
declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters
that ever practiced on mankind. This is the
inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no
escape. But I differ from those who charge this
baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the
United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at
least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue
the constitutional question at length — nor have I
the ability to discuss it as it ought to be
discussed. The subject has been handled with
masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William
Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though
not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. These gentlemen
have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the
Constitution from any design to support slavery for
an hour.
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. Without this right, the
liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure
as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas
tells us that the Constitution is an object to which
no American mind can be too attentive, and no
American heart too devoted. He further says, the
Constitution, in its words, is plain and
intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred,
unsophisticated understandings of our
fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tell us that the
Constitution is the fundamental law, that which
controls all others. The charter of our liberties,
which every citizen has a personal interest in
understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator
Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be
named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers,
so regard the constitution. I take it, therefore,
that it is not presumption in a private citizen to
form an opinion of that instrument.
Now, take the Constitution according to its plain
reading, and I defy the presentation of a single
pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will
be found to contain principles and purposes,
entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.
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. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific
rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire,
the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of
the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet
spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in
taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from
the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled
foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature.
Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment.
“Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In
the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I
say, and let every heart join in saying it:
God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er
When from their galling
chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely
bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and
freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered
fights again
Restore.
God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be
understood,
The claims of human
brotherhood,
And each return for evil,
good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all
feuds to end.
And change into a faithful
friend
Each foe.
God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly
power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence
cower;
But all to manhood’s
stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to
each, to all,
And from his prison-house,
the thrall
Go forth.
Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and
hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend
the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey
deprive —
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen
post,
Whate’er the peril or the
cost,
Be driven.
Source: Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches
and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner (Chicago: Lawrence
Hill, 1999), 188-206.
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