The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the 'lame man leap as an hart.'īut such is not the state of the case. For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man.

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. 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.įellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? 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? The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. They were great men, too - great enough to give frame to a great age. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men.

'The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro' by Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852įellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic.

Sins of the father quote meaning