The North Star, March 15, 1850 There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. He is a bird for the sportsmans gun. Yea! 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. I Have Come to Tell You Something About Slavery. The title of Frederick Douglasss first recorded speech, delivered in October 1841, just three years after his own escape from bondage, signaled the driving impulse of his extraordinary career: to lift the veil on American slavery and the white supremacist ideology that justified it. Some Founding Fathers opposed granting the vote to ordinary citizens, and early electoral districts were kept large to inhibit campaigning by all except those wealthy enough to travel across their expansive boundaries, the historian Lawrence Goldstone wrote in a recent essay called America, then and now.. Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass National Historic The time was when such could be done. Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The Future of the Colored Race Chaffin, Tom. And why is it so little-known today? Long story short? Lincoln once proposed to end slavery by shipping willing slaves back to Africa, and said that he could not envision Black and White people living together in social and political equality. On top of his federal work, Douglass kept a vigorous speaking tour schedule. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. It had made my brothers and sisters strangers to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a myth; it shrouded my father. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. Most noteable is a transcription of Frederick Douglass' speech given at the 2nd Annual N.C. Negro State Fair. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. The Do-Nothing Policy The Black Mans Future in the Southern States: An Address The navy of all the world would not be sufficient to remove our natural increase to that far-off country. Overall, Hunter's writings provide historical sketches of important figures, events, and reprecussions with an emphasis on local history. They adopted the name "Douglass" after marrying. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. The New National Era, October 27, 1870 Who can reason on such a proposition? Theres so much! They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. Salutatory 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. The Composite Nation speech is a brilliant vision of Americas evolving tapestry in all its colors, shades, and ethnicities, Roth, a scholar-in residence at the Jefferson Educational Society, wrote. In a speech made to the nations Black leaders in 1864, Douglass said. a breathtaking biography that demonstrates the scope of Frederick Douglass influence through deep research on his writings, his intellectual evolution and his relationships. Significantly, he held these positions at a time when violence and fraud severely restricted African-American political activism. THE MOST COMPLETE COLLECTION OF WRITTEN WORKS & SPEECHES BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS [Newly Illustrated] - Kindle edition by Douglass, Frederick, Audiobook, This Ebook Features Dynamic Links for Ease of Navigation Plus Bonus. 2023 Yale University Press. A series of postwar amendments sought to make some of these tremendous changes. In the name of your country, torn, distracted, bleeding, and while you are weeping over the bloody graves of more than two hundred thousand of your noblest sons, many of whom have been cut down, in the midst of youthful vigor and beauty, we [Black people] implore you [white people] to abolish slavery. Yet they persevered. Douglass Monthly, May 1861 All Rights Reserved. They are composed principally of newspaper clippings published in North Carolina, but their scope is national as well as local. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. Fighting Rebels with Only One Hand Read the full text below of the sage words from one of the greatest orators of all time. Douglass Monthly, September 1862 Black educator, journalist, and reformer from Raleigh, North Carolina. He said he supported Chinese immigration to America and hoped for the day when more Chinese people could become citizens, vote and hold office. 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. 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 simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. Although these letters address professional and political issues, Hunter established friendships with many of the noteable correspondents. He had a difficult family life. 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. Frederick Douglass Paper, March 4, 1853 WebThe title of Frederick Douglasss first recorded speech, delivered in October 1841, just three years after his own escape from bondage, signaled the driving impulse of his Washington Read by Ava Yuninger, Music by Ava Yuninger. Republican Party leaders now describe the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol as legitimate political discourse.. In July 1892, Douglass published Lynch Law in the South in the North American Review, a newspaper he edited later in life. Our website offers shipping to the United States and Canada only. Movement leaders like Douglass and Ida B. Douglass Monthly, October 1862 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. Wasted Magnanimity Edited by John R. McKivigan, Julie Husband and Heather L. Kaufman. The signs that people and politicians are losing faith in American democracy are everywhere. And there is undeniably a part of White America that has long been suspicious of democracy. They wrote. 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. Douglass had become an internationally celebrated speaker and newspaper editor. Posts and searches for the term civil war have recently spiked on social media and podcasts as the midterm elections approach. Reply to Postmaster General Montgomery Blair Groups that include people with different backgrounds and cultures consistently come up with more innovative solutions to problems because theyre not confined to one perspective, research says. I repeat, I am glad this is so. One in five Medal of Honor recipients have been immigrants. Signs of the Times Correspondence, scrapbooks of clippings, print material such as articles and reports, and other papers, all dating from the Civil War into the first few decades of the 20th century. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. If that is what they wanted, they had any number of other choices, such as Iran, Russia or Hungary.. He implied that constant predictions of democratic doom could become self-fulfilling prophecies. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It is neither. That year will come, and freedoms reign. The War with Mexico Douglass was also ahead of his time in rejecting the notion of inherent differences between races. 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 nations jubilee. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. You have already declared 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. 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. Boston, Massachusetts, January 26, 1865 For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion. 2023 Accessible Archives Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Douglass, sometimes called the prophet of freedom, boldly challenged the nations hypocrisy and used his personal experience as a fugitive slave to illustrate the horrors of the evil institution. Haiti Among the Foremost Civilized Nations of the Earth: An Address There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. By that act, Mason and Dixons 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. And as a bonus for reading to the very end, here are a couple of quotes from Frederick Douglass that I encourage you to reflect on as we honor him today: Jeralyn Caveis a Senior Communications Associate with Advancement Projects Power & Democracy Campaign. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The negro meets no resistance when on a downward course. Assimilation not isolation is our true policy and our natural destiny. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. What Shall Be Done with the Freed Slaves? How did Frederick Douglass become involved in the abolitionist movement? For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. I am not that man. He remarried in 1884 to, On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting for the National Council of Women. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference.