The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the 'lame man leap as an hart.'īut such is not the state of the case. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. “Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.” The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. They were great men, too, great enough to give frame to a great age. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. “Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. In his speech, Douglass acknowledged the Founding Fathers of America, the architects of the Declaration of Independence, for their commitment to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness:” It was a scathing speech in which Douglass stated, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine, You may rejoice, I must mourn.” His speech, given at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was held at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. 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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