From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake., Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter. From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely . I hold that every American citizen has a fight to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Th oppressd shall vilely bend the knee, 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. Noting the rapid changes in transportation and communication he insists that Space is comparatively annihilated. 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. 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! No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. Frederick Douglass delivered 'best Fourth of July speech in American Has the public reading of the speech each year on Boston Commonor the experience or meaning of itchanged over the years? Douglass' speech also foreshadowed the bloody reckoning to come: Civil War. What is the significance of the image of the reptile in the bosom on the nation at the end of this section? Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped "To palter with us in a double sense: And keep the word of promise to the ear, But break it to the heart.". My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. 'It should be here in Rochester.' Fundraising underway for Frederick Above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. 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.. And wear the yoke of tyranny Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Cling to this daycling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. Based on what I know of his writings, however, I think he would have very mixed feelings about the progress we have made. Why does he call his own time degenerate? Be warned! In the orations most famous passages, Douglass discussed what it felt like to see such festivities and to know independence was not a given for people like him: What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! Presenting ideas in. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a byword to a mocking earth. We unveiled the first 10 members of the FD200 today, on the 166th anniversary of Douglasss speech. 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. [Throughout the speech] Douglass looks at the contradictions between the reality of slavery and the lofty claims of a just society outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. They were great men, too, great enough to give frame to a great age. They were great in their day and generation. Douglass's speech emphasized that American slavery and American freedom is a shared history and that the actions of ordinary men and women, demanding freedom, transformed our nation. More than 150 years later, Keidrick Roy, a doctoral student in American Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a U.S. Air Force veteran, will host a virtual community reading and discussion of the storied speech at the Somerville Museum on Thursday as part of the annual state-wide MassHumanities program Reading Frederick Douglass Together.. Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? Douglass uses religious language in discussing Independence. 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 everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. But for me, the hope is in the very fact of gathering, of reading the speech in community, renewing the bonds with others who share a determination to change, and committing to act accordingly.
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