Frederick Douglass and the Fifth of July

Daguerrotype taken Circa 1850 by Samuel Miller, in collection at Art Institute of Chicago

Frederick Douglass fulfilled a request from the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society to give a speech to mark the nation’s independence—by giving a forthright speech about the limitations of that independence for all citizens and by giving it on July 5th, not July 4th.

He and they knew it was effective. A few days later, the president of the group wrote Douglass:

Dear Sir-The Ladies of the "Rochester Anti Slavery Sewing Society," desire me to return you their most sincere thanks for the eloquent and able address delivered in Corinthian Hall, on the 5th of July. Anticipating its speedy publication in Pamphlet form, they request that you will furnish them with one hundred copies for distribution:

In behalf of the Society,

SUSAN F. PORTER, President.

(For more background about this Society, check out a blog post that I wrote last year around this time.)

In his speech, Douglass said:

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic…they loved their country more than their own private interests.

But despite the national rejoicing for Independence Day,

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.

He asked:

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. . . .

Toward the end of the address:

Fellow citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existed of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity a lie.

You can read the full speech here, as well as listen to an excerpt voiced by five young descendants here.

Long speeches were usual for the time, and his was about 90 minutes. The assembly room, Corinthian Hall, was one of Rochester’s finest locations.

Corinthian Hall, Rochester, NY, Circa 1851

The speech received no publicity in any of the city’s “mainstream” press, according to an article in the University of Rochester Library Bulletin (which houses many of Douglass’s papers). Only in Frederick Douglass’s own periodical, which he published in downtown Rochester.