"The Fourth of July is the First Great Fact in Your Nation’s History."

A few reflections about Frederick Douglass's Fourth of July speech.

(Source: Onondaga Historical Association)

Fourth of July reflections inevitably include references to Frederick Douglass’s famous speech addressed to the Ladies’ Antislavery Society in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852 to mark the nation’s birthday.

Unfortunately, most writers today only share a few sentences from the speech to reinforce their deep skepticism about the American experiment.

In this speech to an overwhelming white audience, Douglass asked, “What, to the American slave is your Fourth of July?” Douglass’s bold question captured the hypocrisy of a nation celebrating freedom when millions were being held in shackles. In 1852, the nation was reeling from the recent Fugitive Slave Act, putting at risk Black families who had managed to escape to the free North.

The issue of slavery and westward expansion would gradually split the nation further apart over the next eight years until there was no further room for compromise.

Douglass declared that “from the slave’s point of view,” the Fourth of July more than any other day underscores the “gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”

Your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity,” he declaimed. “Your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are . . . 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.

This is the section of the speech that most people know. It’s a powerful address and a lengthy one as well, numbering over 10,000 words, which means that most people never have a chance to consider the overall message of the speech.

Historian David Blight concisely summarizes the speech and breaks it down into three sections or “movements”:

This speech is a symphony with three movements. First movement, he sets them at ease by honoring the Founding Fathers. He calls the Declaration of Independence the ring-bolt of American liberty. He calls the Fourth of July the American Passover. He sets them all at ease, but then he takes them through a litany of all the horrors of the slave trade, of the slave ships, of slave auction blocks. He takes that audience to the dark heart of what slavery really is.

And then that middle movement - he says, oh, be warned. Be warned. There is a horrible reptile coiled up at your nation's heart. And then he ends. And the last movement of the speech, he says, your nation is still young. It is still malleable, changeable. It's not quite too late. You might yet have a chance to save yourselves.

This speech is a rhetorical masterpiece. And its great theme is American secular and religious hypocrisy for the practice of slavery. And it is a great warning that if the country doesn't find a way to face this problem, it will face tremendous disruption, tremendous violence. Today, it will remind people so much of the current crisis we're in and this ever-lasting problem that we never quite are able to solve - the question of race.

Douglass had initially embraced his mentor William Lloyd Garrison’s view of the Constitution as a pro-slavery document and a “covenant with Hell,” but he gradually moved away from this position.

By the time of the Rochester speech, Douglass came to see the Constitution as an anti-slavery document:

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 . . . 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. . . . I hold that every American 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. . . . 

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single proslavery clause in it.  On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. . . . 

Douglass, unlike anyone else in American history, beautifully captures the tension that I always feel on July 4th when thinking about the history and future of my country, but I always come down on the side of hope and promise.

As did Douglass as well.

“The Fourth of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history—the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny,” Douglass told his listeners. “Cling to this day—cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.”

Happy Fourth of July!