What, to the slave, is the fourth of july ~ Douglass (1852)

“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—

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.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of

the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have

found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every day practices of this nation, and you will

say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a

rival.”