![]() ![]() My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. ![]() 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. 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 irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!.įellow-citizens above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. ![]() The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! …īut such is not the state of the case. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, 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? This text is part of the Teaching Hard History Text Library. ![]()
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