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 passed.
At a time like this, scorching
irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could
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 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 denunciation 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 the United States, at this very hour.
According
to Frederick Douglass, slavery is not a divine because it is when the freedom
for all men end. The hard pain exist when people limit the capacity of living
free to others. How it could be an act of celebrating during July fourth when
some people were enduring the abuse committed by their owners. How the United
States of America can show a face of happiness when thousands of people
continue being forced to do labors without any payments, living in bad conditions,
being hitting, being selling by owners, being treating like merchandise. They
are human beings like anybody. Douglass expressed that it was a crime against
God and against other people. For him, the United States of America need to
change, need to demonstrate equality. People are born free, not to be
humiliated. He expressed his sadness in front of the world, when I read this
article, I could feel how sad he sound, how he felt with the treatment that
slaves had.
I
chose these paragraph because I consider the importance of his words when
Douglass expressed in his words how the United Stated of America could
celebrate this day when others people were enduring the ways in which they were
treated. I think for Douglass there were not motives for celebration, not
happiness, only an emotional pain, disagreement for remember the pain that
others were having, the injustice, where
is the moral? Where was the equality? Where was the freedom? Douglass felt
deception when he wrote those words.
No comments:
Post a Comment