Should rejoice. The USA stopped slavery. Get over it.
Frederick Douglass on the US Constitution:
“Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.”
Ask a Democrat from the south.
Impressive. Within only a few years of this speech, Christians abandoned the Whigs, and within only a few years of that, slavery was no more.
Where would they be today if America never existed?
Its "I'm Not Going To Grow Old And Die In A Shithole Country Day."
You cannot be unmoved if you read the entire speech. Clearly the Founding Fathers were great men to forge a confederacy between very independent minded states of their time, found a nation, win a war against a great and wealthy power,and write a constitution that established the greatest republic the world has ever seen. Yet as Douglass points out, whether it was political, economic or racial fears, they were unable or unwilling to end slavery and enfranchise everyone in this grand human endeavor. It was the Achilles heel of the new Republic. As Lincoln said no foreign power could take a drink of water from the Ohio River without the consent of the American people. The nation could only be destroyed by internal dissension and civil war. It almost was. Slavery was ended with much bitter bloodshed. Yet today’s citizens continue to suffer the consequences of this “peculiar American institution”. It may yet be the core cause for the dissolution of the American endeavor. Face it. The American nation can neither survive “multiculturalism” or a delusional approach to racial and social realities.
Douglass’ speech applied during his time. A man like him wouldn’t deliver the same speech in regards to today’s U.S.A.
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This is obviously in the public domain.
Why the excerpt?
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 everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Amazingly thoughtful speech that sought to rally Americans against the cause of slavery as antithetical to ideas of liberty and freedom contained in the Constitution and to the precepts of Christianity.