What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July

Frederick Douglass and His Views on the Fourth of July
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
The Fourth of July ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other, from this Time forward forever more.
– John Adams, July 3, 1776
The epigraph above helps to explain why, to this day, many Americans continue to observe the Fourth of July in celebration of the nation’s founding and freedom from the yoke of British tyranny. When these words were penned, however, there were already hundreds of thousands of black slaves in the United States, and it is reasonable to posit that they held a vastly different view of the celebration of the founding of the newly founded “Land of the Free” from the white mainstream Americans of the day. To gain some new insights into this issue, the purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the relevant primary and secondary literature to formulate and informed answer to the question, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Following this review and analysis, a summary of the research and an answer to this guiding question are presented in the paper’s conclusion.
Review and Analysis
From any perspective, the irony could not be greater than when the Founding Fathers affixed their signatures to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 written by Thomas Jefferson and others which proclaimed that, “We hold . . . that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness [and] that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” There is no equivocation in Jefferson’s words but there was in the spirit of the Declaration because there were hundreds of thousands of enslaved blacks in the fledging republic at the time, and their legal status would remain essentially unchanged until the promulgation of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in January 1865. Even thereafter, though, Jim Crow laws throughout the Old South would ensure that African Americans were constantly reminded of their inferior status, and it was not until the late 1960s that most of the “colored only” signs had been removed from the former Confederate states.
Taken together, it is clear that the United States was a “Land of the Free” in name only, but there were some other mainstream social practices that were commonplace throughout the late 18th and the first half of the 19th century that helped perpetuate the notion that “blacks deserve to be slaves” mentality among white Americans that seeped into the consciousness of many African Americans at the time and which continues to influence the national consciousness to the present day. Moreover, much of what has been learned by modern Americans about the condition of slaves has been gleaned from “Roots” et al. productions which sensationalize the brutality of slavery but cannot capture how the condition affected the views of slaves about the day of independence that was celebrated by their masters each year.
As the medical profession today pleads with Americans to “trust the science,” the same arguments were being made concerning the correctness of slavery. Indeed, even the medical community provided “scientific” evidence in support of blacks’ physiology in support of the proposition that they were constitutionally best suited for the service in the white man’s “Peculiar Institution.” For instance, in his “ writes, “With negroes, the sanguineous never gains the mastery over the lymphatic and nervous systems Their digestive systems, like children, are strong, and their secretions and excretions copious, excepting the brine, which is rather scant.”[footnoteRef:2] [2: S. A. Cartwright, In the Light of Ethnology, p. 695]
Given the authoritative nature of these “scientifically” verified findings, it is little wonder that many if not most white Americans came to believe that is was just right and natural for them to be on top of the social pecking order and blacks on the bottom, a mindset that continues to shape the modern discourse on race relations today.[footnoteRef:3] This insidious mindset, in turn, profoundly affected the manner in which slaves conceptualized abstractions such as “freedom” and in turn, what the Fourth of July actually meant to them. For instance, an anecdote related by Solomon Northup indicated that one young black girl, Mary, who “like many of the class, scarcely knew there was such a word as freedom. Brought up in the ignorance of a brute, she possessed but little more than a brute's intelligence. She was one of those, and there are very many, who fear nothing but their master's lash, and know no further duty than to obey his voice.”[footnoteRef:4] [3: Loewen, J. W. (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me. New York: The New Press.] [4: Northup, Solomon. Twelve years a slave. Harvard College Library]
These observations suggest that in sharp contrast to the prevailing view about Independence Day held by most white Americans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the vast majority of enslaved blacks in the United States did not regard the Fourth of July as a day of celebration, but yet another reason they would have to work that much harder to ensure that their white owners, family members and friends enjoyed their independence day as evinced by the wretched condition of people like Northup’s Mary noted above. Pro-slavery advocates typically just dismissed such complaints as being more evidence that blacks were unable or unwilling to appreciate the blessings that the white establishment was bestowing upon the black race, including most especially the ultimate gift of eternal salvation that was bestowed through the graces of Christianity.
These profoundly dichotomous and mutually exclusive views about the Fourth of July were eloquently communicated to a sympathetic but otherwise naïve audience when Frederick Douglass delivered his historic “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” in a speech on July 5, 1852 in Rochester, New York. According to one historian’s account, “The fiery orator was invited to speak about what the holiday means for American Blacks to a group of approximately 500 abolitionists who each paid twelve and a half cents to hear the former slave speak. Douglass addresses his ‘Fellow Citizens,’ all of whom were aware of his fascinating life from enslavement to equal justice and rights advocate. Soon, the keynote address becomes a condemnation of America’s support of slavery.”[footnoteRef:5] [5: Bobbi Booke (2019, July 1). Frederick Douglass’ 'The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro' still resonates The Philadelphia Tribune, p. B1.]
To his credit, Douglass prefaces his speech with some self-deprecating comments concerning his nervousness in addressing such an august body and his recognition of the solemnity and auspiciousness of the occasion of the Fourth of July, but it does not take him long to get right to the point. For instance, Douglass equates the Fourth of July to the importance that other peoples have attributed to major historic events when he observes, “It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God.” [footnoteRef:6] Clearly, Douglass acknowledges the gravity as well as the celebratory nature of Independence Day for white Americans here, but it is this gravity that made the celebration of the Fourth of July so galling and even inexplicable to many if not most black slaves. [6: Douglass, Frederick, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.”]
It is also to Douglass’ credit that he cuts his white abolitionist audience some racial slack by noting that the republic was still comparatively young at the time which meant that there was still time for redemption. This left-handed compliment was driven home with Douglass’ observation that while there were signs things were changing for blacks in the United States, he also presciently emphasized that the pace of change was too sluggish and millions of his countrymen remained enslaved to millions of others and the time had come for emancipation and fulfillment of the promises of liberty codified in the Declaration of Independence. In this regard, Douglass admonished his audience that, “[Y]ou are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon.”[footnoteRef:7] [7: Frederick, Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (July 5, 1852).]
The historical record confirms that there were indeed dark clouds looming in the nation’s future as the southern states joined in lockstep to secede from the Union to create their own country that would, in the words of the Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, be “founded upon … the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Armed with a purported body of scientific evidence to support this notion combined with a historical record that chronicled the enslavement of other peoples besides blacks for millennia, the Confederacy did in fact attempt to prove this white supremacist point of view with the bloodiest conflict in the nation’s history -- to date.
Finally, it is especially noteworthy that Douglass had previously expressed the view that the vast majority of blacks that had managed to secure their freedom through one means or another loved their new homeland, even if it was forced upon them. This love of homeland must have been as much a revelation to the white people of the day as Nigger Jim’s confession about his loving feelings for his family to Huckleberry Finn which meant, gasp, that blacks were people too, and they were just like whites! In this regard, Douglass advises one leading white friend that:
The fact is, there are few here who would not return to the South in the event of emancipation. We want to live in the land of our birth, and to lay our bones by the side of our fathers'; and nothing short of an intense love of personal freedom keeps us from the South. For the sake of this, most of us would live on a crust of bread and a cup of cold water.[footnoteRef:8] [8: Frederick Douglass, “Letter to Thomas Auld” (September 3, 1848) p. 3]
Even though it required a bloody Civil War, an Emancipation Proclamation, and a constitutional amendment, Douglass and his like-minded peers succeeded in changing the legal status of black slaves into African Americans, but longstanding problems are not solved overnight and the racial strife that has roiled the nation in recent months indicates that far more remains to be done.
Conclusion
Although many Americans are “slaves to fashion” or “slaves to their jobs” except for incarcerated prisoners that have been sentenced by a court of competent jurisdiction, slavery is outlawed in the United States today. The research showed, though, that this was not always the case and the moral stain of slavery will forever mar the nation’s past. In fact, the lingering aftereffects of the Civil War and the powerful negative stereotypes about African Americans continue to influence modern thinking about race relations in the United States. The burgeoning Black Lives Movement, perhaps the largest social movement in U.S. history, reflects just some of the damage that this mindset has caused since the nation’s founding, and Lincoln was right when he said that it would take as much bondsmen blood to pay for slavery as the Peculiar Institution exacted to salve the country’s wounds.
References
Booke, Bobbi. (2019, July 1). Frederick Douglass’ 'The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro' still resonates.” The Philadelphia Tribune, p. B1.
Cartwright, S. A. In the Light of Ethnology.
Douglass, Frederick. Letter to Thomas Auld (September 3, 1848).
Douglass, Frederick, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (July 5, 1852).
Northup, Solomon. Twelve years a slave. Harvard College Library.