Page 18 - Integrity Seminars - Special Report

good colored man named Charles Lawson, and in let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do
tones of holy affection he told me to pray, and to not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to
"cast all my care upon God." This I sought to do; the roof of my mouth.”
and though for weeks I was a poor,
broken-hearted mourner, traveling through [Editor's note: Psalms 137:1-4]
doubts and fears, I finally found my burden
lightened, and my heart relieved. I loved all Douglass’s citation of Psalms highlights this
mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I observation by historian David Blight (supra):

abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world
in a new light, and my great concern was to have Douglass loved the language of the King James
everybody converted. My desire to learn increased, Bible, especially the Psalms and the Old
and especially did I want a thorough Testament prophets. Their warnings about God’s
acquaintance with the contents of the Bible. I have retribution for sin and evil, their poetry and
gathered scattered pages of the Bible from the storytelling, seemed to ring in his head like the
filthy street-gutters, and washed and dried them, lyrics of favorite old songs and hymns. Early in his
that in moments of leisure I might get a word or career he mastered the oratorical art of the
two of wisdom from them. jeremiad, the rhetorical device made famous in
America by the Puritans, but appropriated
There's no period in Douglass’s life where a
effectively by African Americans and many others.
religious perspective can't be found. Here's an
The jeremiad was the sermon that called the flock
example from his famous "What to the Slave Is
back from their declension, from their waning zeal
the Fourth of July?” speech in 1852.
to a renewed faith and activism. Douglass
mastered the jeremiadic tradition, and Isaiah,
Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding
Jeremiah, and other prophets provided an infinite
slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of
storehouse of wisdom and argument. As Douglass
humanity which is outraged, in the name of
began to seize their words and their stories, he
liberty which is fettered, in the name of the
found in the prophets his inspiration, a sense of
constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded
wrath, mystery, pathos, history, and justice.
and trampled upon, dare to call in question and
to denounce, with all the emphasis I can
command, everything that serves to perpetuate Most of the prophetic qualities Blight
slavery — the great sin and shame of America! . . described--especially a sense of history and
. I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a . . . justice--can be found in an 1867 speech by

woe-smitten people! Douglass, addressing the failure of Confederate
armies to nurture "the good in their own souls":

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down.

Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We
The rebel armies fought well, fought bravely,
hanged our harps upon the willows in the
fought desperately, but they fought in fetters.
midst thereof. For there, they that carried us
Invisible chains were about them. Deep down in
away captive, required of us a song; and they
their own consciences there was an accusing voice
who wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
reminding them that they were fighting for chains
Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we
and slavery, and not for freedom. They were in
sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I
chains—entangled with the chains of
forget thee, O Jerusalem,

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