The Hypocrisy Of American Slavery

This article was published in 2017. People think they know everything about slavery in the United States, but they don't. They think the majority of African slaves came to the American colonies, but they didn't. They talk about 400 years of slavery, but it wasn't.What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Language. Watch. Edit. (Redirected from The Hypocrisy of American Slavery). "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" is the title now given to a speech by Frederick Douglass delivered on July 5, 1852, in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York...Historians and experts examine the American system of racialized slavery and the hypocrisy it relied on to function. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is...wfpl.org - Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he doesn't think the year enslaved Africans were first brought to colonial America is one of the most …As America was explored more and more by the Europeans, it's conquerors saw great promise in the land. In the 1400's, the Spanish stumbled upon America This is a point made by Frederick Douglass in his "Hypocrisy of American Slavery" given on the fourth of July where he shames the nation for...

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? - Wikipedia

Slavery is over, right? Sure, slavery was bad…but what does Frederick Douglass have to say that matters to us today? It's no accident that Douglass spoke on the hypocrisy of American slavery on the Fourth of July because what he's really getting at is the idea of two Americas.Today we will be looking at Frederick Douglass and his speech on the hypocrisy of American Slavery. It is interesting to read the perspective of a person who was born a slave and then fled north to gain his freedom.There is one African American who survived slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction and lived to brilliantly write, argue against and tell about it. One of Douglass' most famous speeches was given at July 5, 1852, Independence Day Celebration in Rochester, N. Y. He noted the hypocrisy of the...The History of American Slavery. 3: The Hypocrisy of America's Revolution. April 27, 20212:14 PM. Slate podcast transcripts are created by Snackable using machine-learning software S1: Welcome to the third episode of The History of American Slavery, A Slate Academy. My name is Jamelle Bouie.

The System of American Slavery - HISTORY

Slave resistance blew up the big lie that slaves were happy in bondage. Those who made their way out of slavery testified to its cruelty. They bore the evidence on their backs. Black orators and writers hammered away at American hypocrisy, slavery's "democratic whips—its republican chains...Douglass said that slaves owed nothing to the American founding: What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Douglass believed that slavery could be eliminated with the support of the church, and also with the reexamination of what the Bible was actually saying.Slavery among Native Americans in the United States includes slavery by and slavery of Native Americans roughly within what is currently the United States of America. Tribal territories and the slave trade ranged over present-day borders.Personal recording of "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery" speech by Frederick Douglass. Nikole Hannah-Jones addresses the hypocrisy of American ideals and our founding fathers. The author of the New York Times'The Hypocrisy of American Slavery. by Frederick Douglass (excerpt). Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them.

Coordinates: 43°09′22″N 77°36′47″W / 43.1562269°N 77.6129184°W

Frederick Douglass circa 1852 The 1852 pamphlet printing of the speech

"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"[1][2] is the name now given to a speech through Frederick Douglass delivered on July 5, 1852, in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York, addressing the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.[3] The speech is most likely the maximum widely known of all of Frederick Douglass' writings save his autobiographies. Many copies of one section of it, beginning in para. 32, have been circulated online.[4] Due to this and the variant titles given to it in various places, and the fact that it is called a July Fourth Oration however was in reality delivered on July 5, some confusion has arisen about the date and contents of the speech. The speech has since been published beneath the above title in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One, Vol. 2. [5]

While relating to the celebrations of the Independence Day in the United States the day ahead of, the speech explores the constitutional and values-based arguments towards the persisted existence of Slavery in the United States.[3] Douglass orates that sure statements about American values, such as liberty, citizenship, and freedom, were an offense to the enslaved inhabitants of the United States as a result of of their lack of freedom, liberty, and citizenship. As well, Douglass referred no longer simplest to the captivity of enslaved other people, but to the cruel exploitation and the cruelty and torture that slaves were subjected to in the United States.[6] Rhetoricians R.L. Heath and D. Waymer known as this subject the "paradox of the positive" as it highlights how one thing sure and supposed to be sure can also exclude people.[6]

Views expressed in the speech[]

The 4th of July Address, delivered in Corinthian Hall, via Frederick Douglass, is published on good paper, and makes a neat pamphlet of 40 pages. The 'Address' may be had at this place of work, worth ten cents, a single copy, or six bucks per hundred.

—Advertisement for the pamphlet of Douglass' speech from the July 12, 1852 ion of Frederick Douglass' Paper (previously The North Star)

Douglass stated that slaves owed not anything to and had no sure feelings in opposition to the founding of the United States:

What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great rules of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, prolonged to us?...What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I resolution; an afternoon that unearths to him, greater than all different days in the yr, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he's the consistent sufferer.[7]

Douglass additionally stresses the view that slaves and unfastened Americans are equal in nature. He expresses his trust in the speech that he and other slaves are fighting the same struggle in phrases of wishing to be free that White Americans, the ancestors of the white folks he is addressing, fought seventy years previous.

They were statesmen, patriots, and heroes, and…with them, justice, liberty, and humanity were final; no longer slavery and oppression.[8]:340

Douglass additionally says that if the residents of America believe that slaves are "men",[8]:342 they will have to be handled as such. True Christians, in keeping with Douglass, must not stand idly by way of whilst the rights and liberty of others are stripped away.

Christianity is of significance in Douglass's speech. He does not talk in opposition to religion typically, however fairly how religion offers with slavery, specifically in America. He is outraged via the lack of responsibility and indifference against slavery that many sects have taken around the nation. He says that, if the rest, many churches in truth stand at the back of slavery and toughen the persisted life of the institution. Douglass equates this to being worse than many different issues which might be banned, particularly, books and performs which are banned for infidelity.

They convert the very title of faith into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to substantiate extra infidels, on this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done.[8]:344

Nevertheless, Douglass claims that it will exchange. The United States does not have to stick the way it's. The nation can growth find it irresistible has before, remodeling from being a colony of a far-away king to an unbiased nation. Great Britain, and plenty of different nations of that point, had already abolished slavery from its territories. The British accomplished this via religion or more in particular, the church. Because the church stood in the back of the resolution to abolish the selling and buying of human other folks, so did the rest of the nation. Douglass argues that religion is the center of the downside but also the major option to it.

Douglass believed that slavery may well be eliminated with the strengthen of the church, and in addition with the reexamination of what the Bible was once in truth saying.

You profess to imagine, "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 like one another; yet you notoriously hate (and glory for your hatred) all males whose skins aren't colored like your individual.[8]:345

Douglass desires his target audience to comprehend that they don't seem to be residing as much as their proclaimed ideals. He talks about how they, being Americans, are proud of their nation and their religion and the way they have fun in the name of freedom and liberty and yet they don't offer those things to thousands and thousands of their nation's citizens.[8]:345

It is alleged that America is constructed on the idea of liberty and freedom, however Douglass tells his audience that greater than anything else, it is built on inconsistencies and hypocrisies which have been overlooked for so long they seem like truths. According to Douglass, these inconsistencies have made the United States the object of mockery and ceaselessly contempt amongst the various international locations of the international.[8]:346 To prove proof of those inconsistencies, as one historian noted, all through the speech Douglass claims that the United States Constitution is an abolitionist report and not a pro-slavery file.[9] Douglass mentioned:[10][11]

An advertisement for the occasion of the speech.

Fellow-citizens! there is not any topic in admire to which, the other people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery persona of the Constitution. In that tool I dangle there's neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful factor; however, interpreted because it needs to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, believe its purposes. Is slavery amongst them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither.

In this respect, Douglass' views converged with that of Abraham Lincoln's[12] in that the ones politicians who have been saying that the Constitution was a justification for their beliefs in regard to slavery had been doing so dishonestly.

However, if slavery have been abolished and equivalent rights given to all, that might no longer be the case. In the end, Douglass desires to keep his hope and faith in humanity high. He believes that the end of slavery is close to and that there is no strategy to forestall development. Knowledge is turning into more readily available, Douglass stated, and soon the American other people will open their eyes to the atrocities they've been causing on their fellow Americans.

Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and beneath the sea, as well as on the earth.[8]:346

Later views on American independence[]

The speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" used to be delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and completed the abolition of slavery. During the Civil War, Douglass stated that since Massachusetts have been the first state to join the Patriot purpose all over the American Revolutionary War, black men should move to Massachusetts to enlist in the Union Army.[13] After the Civil War, Douglass stated that "we" had achieved an ideal factor by way of gaining American independence throughout the American Revolutionary War, despite the fact that he stated it was once not as nice as what was once completed via the Civil War.[14]

Legacy[]

In the United States, the speech is widely taught in historical past and English classes in high school and faculty.[3] American studies professor Andrew S. Bibby argues that as a result of many of the ions produced for educational use are abridged, they incessantly misrepresent Douglass's unique thru omission or orial focal point.[3]

A statue of Douglass erected in Rochester in 2018 was once torn down on July 5, 2020—the 168th anniversary of the speech.[15][16] The head of the organization liable for the memorial speculated that it was once vandalized in line with the removing of Confederate monuments in the wake of the George Floyd protests.[17]

Notable readings[]

The speech has been notably carried out or read via essential figures, together with the following:

References[]

^ Douglass, Frederick (1852). Frederick Douglass, Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, July fifth, 1852. Rochester: Lee, Mann &co., 1852. Rochester, NY: Lee, Mann &Co. ^ https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/ ^ a b c d e f g h Bibby, Andrew S. (July 2, 2014). "'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?': Frederick Douglass's fiery Independence Day speech is widely read today, but not so widely understood". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 13, 2015. ^ The paragraphing referenced here's taken from an ion of the speech at RhetoricalGoddess ^ Douglass, Frederick (1982). Blassingame, John W. (ed.). The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches Debates, and Interviews. Vol. 2, 1847-54. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 359-387. ^ a b Heath, Robert L.; Waymer, Damion (2009). "Activist Public Relations and the Paradox of the Positive: A Case Study of Frederick Douglass's Fourth of July Address". Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations II: 192–215. ISBN 9781135220877. ^ Battistoni, Richard. The American Constitutional Experience: Selected Readings & Supreme Court Opinions, pp. 66-73 (Kendall Hunt, 2000). ^ a b c d e f g Douglass, Frederick (1852). "Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, July 5, 1852". In Harris, Leonard; Pratt, Scott L.; Waters, Anne S. (eds.). American Philosophies: An Anthology. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell (revealed 2002). ISBN 978-0-631-21002-3. ^ Colaiaco, James A. (March 24, 2015). Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July. St. Martin's Publishing Group. ISBN 9781466892781 – via Google Books. ^ "Exceptionalism and the left". Los Angeles Times. December 13, 2010. ^ African Americans In Congress: A Documentary History, through Eric Freedman and Stephen A, Jones, 2008, p. 39 ^ Gorski, Philip (February 6, 2017). American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400885008 – by means of Google Books. ^ Douglass, Frederick. Frederick Douglass on Slavery and the Civil War: Selections from His Writings, p. 46 (Dover Publications, 2014): "We can get at the throat of treason and slavery through the State of Massachusetts. She was first in the War of Independence; first to break the chains of her slaves; first to make the black man equal before the law; first to admit colored children to her common schools, and she was first to answer with her blood the alarm cry of the nation, when its capital was menaced by rebels." ^ Douglass, Frederick. Autobiographies, p. 765 (Library of America, 1994): "It was a great thing to achieve American Independence when we numbered three millions, but it was a greater thing to save this country from dismemberment and ruin when it numbered thirty millions." ^ Schwartz, Matthew S. (July 6, 2020). "Frederick Douglass Statue Torn Down On Anniversary Of Famous Speech". NPR. Archived from the unique on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020. ^ Brown, Deneen L. (July 6, 2020). "Frederick Douglass statue torn down in Rochester, N.Y., on anniversary of his famous Fourth of July speech". The Washington Post. Archived from the unique on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020. ^ Pengelly, Martin (July 6, 2020). "Frederick Douglass statue torn down on anniversary of great speech". The Guardian. Archived from the unique on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020. Speaking to WROC, [Carvin] Eison requested: 'Is this some type of retaliation because of the nationwide fever over Confederate monuments at the moment? Very disappointing, it's past disappointing.' ^ Thurston, Baratunde (July 4, 2020) [Recorded July 1, 2016]. Baratunde Delivers USA Co-Founder Frederick Douglass 1852 Speech: 'What To The Slave Is The 4th of July'. Facebook. Directed by Tara Garver Mikhael. Brooklyn Public Library. Retrieved July 7, 2020.

Further studying[]

Bizzell, Patricia (1997-02-01). "The 4th of July and the 22nd of December: The Function of Cultural Archives in Persuasion, as Shown by Frederick Douglass and William Apess". College Composition and Communication. 48 (1): 44–60. doi:10.2307/358770. ISSN 0010-096X. JSTOR 358770. Douglass, Frederick. A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1845. Douglass, Frederick, ed. Stauffer, John. Random House. 2003. My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I - Life as a Slave, Part II - Life as a Freeman, with an creation by James McCune Smith. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan. 1855. Gates, Jr. Henry Louis, ed. Frederick Douglass, Autobiography. New York: Library of America. 1994. Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2007.