A Frederick Douglass reenactor performs at Cedar Hill as an audience, watches. NPS Photo. Every year on Independence Day (July 4th), the National Park Service offers visitors the opportunity to come to Cedar Hill, the last residence of Frederick Douglass, to see and hear a performance of his most-famous speech, What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered by a Douglass reenactor on the Other texts in Frederick Douglass' Paper, 9 July 1852; Douglass, Bondage and Freedom, 441-50; Woodson, Negro Orators and Their Orations, 197-223; James M. Gregory, Frederick Douglass, the Orator (New York, 1893), 103-06, misdated 4 July 1852; Foner, Life and Writings, 2: 181-204. Within the now-famous address is what historian Philip S. Foner has called "probably the most moving passage in all of Douglass' speeches." What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? Douglass quickly became a renowned orator and fierce critic of slavery. Douglass delivered this speech to the Ladies’ Antislavery Society of Rochester, New York, on the meaning and significance of the Fourth of July to the slave. Speaking on July 5, the day after Independence Day (something Douglass had insisted upon), and before a predominantly Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a former slave who became the greatest abolitionist orator of the antebellum period. During the Civil War he worked tirelessly for the emancipation of the four million enslaved African Americans. Frederick Douglass, delivered this speech, sometimes called, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” or the Fifth of July speech, on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York. When Douglass delivered his famous “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” address before an audience at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, he was issuing “a scathing Independence Day Oration, by Frederick Douglass. Abridged.1 Delivered in Rochester, NY, on July 5, 1852. 1 Mr. President, Friends, and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. One person who felt that way was Douglass, the famous abolitionist, who was himself born into slavery. When the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, N.Y., invited Douglass to give a July 4 Fourth of July oration Frederick Douglass (1852) d but escaped north when he was about 20. He achieved fame as an orator, touring the northern United States and t e British Isles to speak against slavery. He gave the speech excerpted here at the invitation of a women’s anti-slavery society in Roch Independence Day Oration, by Frederick Douglass. Abridged.1 Delivered in Rochester, NY, on July 5, 1852. 1 Mr. President, Friends, and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. On Monday, July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech to the “ Ladies of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society, ” which arguably became his most famous public oration. Rather than a celebration of the Independence Day holiday, Douglass asked an obvious, simple and damning question: What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass’s oration from July 5, 1852, is an essential speech for the nation now remembered as “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” The Beinecke Library stewards two copies of the first printing of the speech. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an Independence Day celebration organized by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Though a biting critique of the federal government’s support of slavery and the recently passed Fugitive Slave Act, the 500 to 600 people in attendance at Corinthian Hall heartily supported Douglass 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 clay, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act that day. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered his powerful speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. In it, he confronted the meaning of Independence Day from the perspective of those still enslaved, asking what freedom could mean in a Noted for its biting irony and bitter rhetoric, and acute textual analysis of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Christian Bible, the speech is among the most widely known of all of Douglass's writings. [5] Frederick Douglass was born an enslaved person in Maryland, later escaping into freedom and emerging as one of the leading abolitionist voices in the nineteenth century. In June 1852, he delivered this Independence Day address to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. Source: Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, by Frederick Douglass, July 5th, 1852 (Rochester: Lee, Mann & Co., 1852) from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (GLC06829) On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass was a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition.
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