My Bondage and My Freedom, My Bondage and My Freedom

F >> Frederick Douglass >> My Bondage and My Freedom, My Bondage and My Freedom

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INHUMANITY OF SLAVERY

_Extract from A Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester,
December 8, 1850_

The relation of master and slave has been called patriarchal, and
only second in benignity and tenderness to that of the parent and
child. This representation is doubtless believed by many
northern people; and this may account, in part, for the lack of
interest which we find among persons whom we are bound to believe
to be honest and humane. What, then, are the facts? Here I will
not quote my own experience in slavery; for this you might call
one-sided testimony. I will not cite the declarations of
abolitionists; for these you might pronounce exaggerations. I
will not rely upon advertisements cut from newspapers; for these
you might call isolated cases. But I will refer you to the laws
adopted by the legislatures of the slave states. I give you such
evidence, because it cannot be invalidated nor denied. I hold in
my hand sundry extracts from the slave codes of our country, from
which I will quote. * * *

Now, if the foregoing be an indication of kindness, _what is
cruelty_? If this be parental affection, _what is bitter
malignity_? A more atrocious and blood-thirsty string of laws
could not well be conceived of. And yet I am bound to say that
they fall short of indicating the horrible cruelties constantly
practiced in the slave states.

I admit that there are individual slaveholders less cruel and
barbarous than is allowed by law; but these form the exception.
The majority of slaveholders find it necessary, to insure
obedience, at times, to avail themselves of the utmost extent of
the law, and many go beyond it. If kindness were the rule, we
should not see advertisements filling the columns of almost every
southern newspaper, offering large rewards for fugitive slaves,
and describing them as being branded with irons, loaded with
chains, and scarred by the whip. One of the most telling
testimonies against the pretended kindness of slaveholders, is
the fact that uncounted numbers of fugitives are now inhabiting
the Dismal Swamp, preferring <344>the untamed wilderness to their
cultivated homes--choosing rather to encounter hunger and thirst,
and to roam with the wild beasts of the forest, running the
hazard of being hunted and shot down, than to submit to the
authority of _kind_ masters.

I tell you, my friends, humanity is never driven to such an
unnatural course of life, without great wrong. The slave finds
more of the milk of human kindness in the bosom of the savage
Indian, than in the heart of his _Christian_ master. He leaves
the man of the _bible_, and takes refuge with the man of the
_tomahawk_. He rushes from the praying slaveholder into the paws
of the bear. He quits the homes of men for the haunts of wolves.
He prefers to encounter a life of trial, however bitter, or
death, however terrible, to dragging out his existence under the
dominion of these _kind_ masters.

The apologists for slavery often speak of the abuses of slavery;
and they tell us that they are as much opposed to those abuses as
we are; and that they would go as far to correct those abuses and
to ameliorate the condition of the slave as anybody. The answer
to that view is, that slavery is itself an abuse; that it lives
by abuse; and dies by the absence of abuse. Grant that slavery
is right; grant that the relations of master and slave may
innocently exist; and there is not a single outrage which was
ever committed against the slave but what finds an apology in the
very necessity of the case. As we said by a slaveholder (the
Rev. A. G. Few) to the Methodist conference, "If the relation be
right, the means to maintain it are also right;" for without
those means slavery could not exist. Remove the dreadful
scourge--the plaited thong--the galling fetter--the accursed
chain--and let the slaveholder rely solely upon moral and
religious power, by which to secure obedience to his orders, and
how long do you suppose a slave would remain on his plantation?
The case only needs to be stated; it carries its own refutation
with it.

Absolute and arbitrary power can never be maintained by one man
over the body and soul of another man, without brutal
chastisement and enormous cruelty.

To talk of _kindness_ entering into a relation in which one party
is robbed of wife, of children, of his hard earnings, of home, of
friends, of society, of knowledge, and of all that makes this
life desirable, is most absurd, wicked, and preposterous.

I have shown that slavery is wicked--wicked, in that it violates
the great law of liberty, written on every human heart--wicked,
in that it violates the first command of the decalogue--wicked,
in that it fosters the most disgusting licentiousness--wicked, in
that it mars and defaces <345>the image of God by cruel and
barbarous inflictions--wicked, in that it contravenes the laws of
eternal justice, and tramples in the dust all the humane and
heavenly precepts of the New Testament.

The evils resulting from this huge system of iniquity are not
confined to the states south of Mason and Dixon's line. Its
noxious influence can easily be traced throughout our northern
borders. It comes even as far north as the state of New York.
Traces of it may be seen even in Rochester; and travelers have
told me it casts its gloomy shadows across the lake, approaching
the very shores of Queen Victoria's dominions.

The presence of slavery may be explained by--as it is the
explanation of--the mobocratic violence which lately disgraced
New York, and which still more recently disgraced the city of
Boston. These violent demonstrations, these outrageous invasions
of human rights, faintly indicate the presence and power of
slavery here. It is a significant fact, that while meetings for
almost any purpose under heaven may be held unmolested in the
city of Boston, that in the same city, a meeting cannot be
peaceably held for the purpose of preaching the doctrine of the
American Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created
equal." The pestiferous breath of slavery taints the whole moral
atmosphere of the north, and enervates the moral energies of the
whole people.

The moment a foreigner ventures upon our soil, and utters a
natural repugnance to oppression, that moment he is made to feel
that there is little sympathy in this land for him. If he were
greeted with smiles before, he meets with frowns now; and it
shall go well with him if he be not subjected to that peculiarly
fining method of showing fealty to slavery, the assaults of a
mob.

Now, will any man tell me that such a state of things is natural,
and that such conduct on the part of the people of the north,
springs from a consciousness of rectitude? No! every fibre of
the human heart unites in detestation of tyranny, and it is only
when the human mind has become familiarized with slavery, is
accustomed to its injustice, and corrupted by its selfishness,
that it fails to record its abhorrence of slavery, and does not
exult in the triumphs of liberty.

The northern people have been long connected with slavery; they
have been linked to a decaying corpse, which has destroyed the
moral health. The union of the government; the union of the
north and south, in the political parties; the union in the
religious organizations of the land, have all served to deaden
the moral sense of the northern people, and to impregnate them
with sentiments and ideas forever in conflict with what as a
nation we call _genius of American institutions_. Rightly
viewed, <346>this is an alarming fact, and ought to rally all
that is pure, just, and holy in one determined effort to crush
the monster of corruption, and to scatter "its guilty profits" to
the winds. In a high moral sense, as well as in a national
sense, the whole American people are responsible for slavery, and
must share, in its guilt and shame, with the most obdurate men-
stealers of the south.

While slavery exists, and the union of these states endures,
every American citizen must bear the chagrin of hearing his
country branded before the world as a nation of liars and
hypocrites; and behold his cherished flag pointed at with the
utmost scorn and derision. Even now an American _abroad_ is
pointed out in the crowd, as coming from a land where men gain
their fortunes by "the blood of souls," from a land of slave
markets, of blood-hounds, and slave-hunters; and, in some
circles, such a man is shunned altogether, as a moral pest. Is
it not time, then, for every American to awake, and inquire into
his duty with respect to this subject?

Wendell Phillips--the eloquent New England orator--on his return
from Europe, in 1842, said, "As I stood upon the shores of Genoa,
and saw floating on the placid waters of the Mediterranean, the
beautiful American war ship Ohio, with her masts tapering
proportionately aloft, and an eastern sun reflecting her noble
form upon the sparkling waters, attracting the gaze of the
multitude, my first impulse was of pride, to think myself an
American; but when I thought that the first time that gallant
ship would gird on her gorgeous apparel, and wake from beneath
her sides her dormant thunders, it would be in defense of the
African slave trade, I blushed in utter _shame_ for my country."

Let me say again, _slavery is alike the sin and the shame of the
American people;_ it is a blot upon the American name, and the
only national reproach which need make an American hang his head
in shame, in the presence of monarchical governments.

With this gigantic evil in the land, we are constantly told to
look _at home;_ if we say ought against crowned heads, we are
pointed to our enslaved millions; if we talk of sending
missionaries and bibles abroad, we are pointed to three millions
now lying in worse than heathen darkness; if we express a word of
sympathy for Kossuth and his Hungarian fugitive brethren, we are
pointed to that horrible and hell-black enactment, "the fugitive
slave bill."

Slavery blunts the edge of all our rebukes of tyranny abroad--the
criticisms that we make upon other nations, only call forth
ridicule, contempt, and scorn. In a word, we are made a reproach
and a by-word to a <347>mocking earth, and we must continue to be
so made, so long as slavery continues to pollute our soil.

We have heard much of late of the virtue of patriotism, the love
of country, &c., and this sentiment, so natural and so strong,
has been impiously appealed to, by all the powers of human
selfishness, to cherish the viper which is stinging our national
life away. In its name, we have been called upon to deepen our
infamy before the world, to rivet the fetter more firmly on the
limbs of the enslaved, and to become utterly insensible to the
voice of human woe that is wafted to us on every southern gale.
We have been called upon, in its name, to desecrate our whole
land by the footprints of slave-hunters, and even to engage
ourselves in the horrible business of kidnapping.

I, too, would invoke the spirit of patriotism; not in a narrow
and restricted sense, but, I trust, with a broad and manly
signification; not to cover up our national sins, but to inspire
us with sincere repentance; not to hide our shame from the
the{sic} world's gaze, but utterly to abolish the cause of that
shame; not to explain away our gross inconsistencies as a nation,
but to remove the hateful, jarring, and incongruous elements from
the land; not to sustain an egregious wrong, but to unite all our
energies in the grand effort to remedy that wrong.

I would invoke the spirit of patriotism, in the name of the law
of the living God, natural and revealed, and in the full belief
that "righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin is a reproach to
any people." "He that walketh righteously, and speaketh
uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that
shaketh his hands from the holding of bribes, he shall dwell on
high, his place of defense shall be the munitions of rocks, bread
shall be given him, his water shall be sure."

We have not only heard much lately of patriotism, and of its aid
being invoked on the side of slavery and injustice, but the very
prosperity of this people has been called in to deafen them to
the voice of duty, and to lead them onward in the pathway of sin.
Thus has the blessing of God been converted into a curse. In the
spirit of genuine patriotism, I warn the American people, by all
that is just and honorable, to BEWARE!

I warn them that, strong, proud, and prosperous though we be,
there is a power above us that can "bring down high looks; at the
breath of whose mouth our wealth may take wings; and before whom
every knee shall bow;" and who can tell how soon the avenging
angel may pass over our land, and the sable bondmen now in
chains, may become the instruments of our nation's chastisement!
Without appealing to any higher feeling, I would warn the
American people, and the American govern<348>ment, to be wise in
their day and generation. I exhort them to remember the history
of other nations; and I remind them that America cannot always
sit "as a queen," in peace and repose; that prouder and stronger
governments than this have been shattered by the bolts of a just
God; that the time may come when those they now despise and hate,
may be needed; when those whom they now compel by oppression to
be enemies, may be wanted as friends. What has been, may be
again. There is a point beyond which human endurance cannot go.
The crushed worm may yet turn under the heel of the oppressor. I
warn them, then, with all solemnity, and in the name of
retributive justice, _to look to their ways;_ for in an evil
hour, those sable arms that have, for the last two centuries,
been engaged in cultivating and adorning the fair fields of our
country, may yet become the instruments of terror, desolation,
and death, throughout our borders.

It was the sage of the Old Dominion that said--while speaking of
the possibility of a conflict between the slaves and the
slaveholders--"God has no attribute that could take sides with
the oppressor in such a contest. I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God _is just_, and that his justice cannot sleep
forever." Such is the warning voice of Thomas Jefferson; and
every day's experience since its utterance until now, confirms
its wisdom, and commends its truth.

WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE
FOURTH OF JULY?

_Extract from an Oration, at Rochester, July 5, 1852_

Fellow-Citizens--Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called
upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to
do with your national independence? Are the great principles of
political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that
Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore,
called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar,
and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the
blessings, resulting from your independence to us?

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. 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. In a case like
that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as
an hart."

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad
sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the
pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only
reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in
which you this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich
inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence,
bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The
sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought
stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is _yours_, not
mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters
into the grand illuminated <350>temple of liberty, and call upon
him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and
sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking
me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct.
And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a
nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by
the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable
ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and
woe-smitten people.

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when
we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the
midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive,
required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us
mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing
the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O
Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not
remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultous joy, I hear the
mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous
yesterday, are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant
shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully
remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my
right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the
roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their
wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason
most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before
God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is
AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see this day and its popular
characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there,
identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I
do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character
and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on
this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the
past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the
nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to
the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be
false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and
bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity
which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in
the name of the constitution and the bible, which are disregarded
and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with
all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to
perpetuate slavery--the great sin and shame of America! "I will
not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest
language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that
any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is
not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and
just.
<351>

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in
this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to
make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue
more, and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less,
your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit,
where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in
the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch
of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I
undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is
conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves
acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government.
They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of
the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the state of
Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how
ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while
only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to the
like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the
slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being. The
manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact
that southern statute books are covered with enactments
forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the
slave to read or write. When you can point to any such laws, in
reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue
the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when
the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the
fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to
distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you
that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the
Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing,
planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools,
erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in
metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that, while we
are reading, writing, and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants,
and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers,
poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that, while we
are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men--
digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific,
feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting,
thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and
children, and, above all, confessing and worshiping the
Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality
beyond the grave--we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he
is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared
it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a
question for republicans? <352>Is it to be settled by the rules
of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great
difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of
justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day in the
presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to
show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it
relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do
so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to
your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of
heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for _him_.

What! am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob
them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them
ignorant of their relations to their fellow-men, to beat them
with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their
limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at
auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to
burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to
their masters? Must I argue that a system, thus marked with
blood and stained with pollution, is wrong? No; I will not. I
have better employment for my time and strength than such
arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not
divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of
divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That
which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a
proposition! They that can, may! I cannot. The time for such
argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is
needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's
ear, I would to-day pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule,
blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it
is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle
shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the
earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the
conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the
nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be
exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed
and denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth 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, <353>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.

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