Page 6 - Integrity Seminars - Special Report

[2] Encourage These remarks, and a speech first published in
1881 praising the heroism of John Brown, are a
independent thinking in profile in courage as much as a study in

yourself and others eloquence. No one reading them can deny
Douglass’s
radicalism,
including
lifelong
advocacy of force against all manifestations of
No one can define with certainty the origins of
slavery.
Frederick Douglass's capacity for independent
thought. High on the list of possibilities might
be the contradictions he saw between Christian
theory and practice; his early willingness to
forcibly resist an abusive slaveholder; his
experience as fugitive slave; his early exposure
to abolitionism (and internal debates among
abolitionists); and his extended travel to
non-slaveholding countries.

Whatever the origins, students are unlikely to
find a better example of Douglass's capacity for
independent thinking than his famous 1852
Speech at the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery
Society titled What to the Slave is the Fourth of
July? Many abolitionists might have shared at
least some of his views, but Douglass--who had
multiple threatening and sometimes violent
encounters with white supremacists--knew this John Brown
speech would be a provocation to a much larger
audience. He said, in part:
However, often in tandem with his most
Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your
provocative, piercing, and forceful
national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery pronouncements, Douglass rejected dualistic
in this country brands your republicanism as a thinking. Independent thought, for him,
sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and encompassed nuance and complexity rather
your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral than simplistic division of the world into
power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at contending groups or races. Probably the best
home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes example of this trait can be seen in his Oration
your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, but it's also
mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your evident in his What to the Slave is the Fourth of
government, the only thing that seriously July? speech. The Constitution itself, he stated,
disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters is:
your progress; it is the enemy of improvement,
"a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT
the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it [capitalization in the original]. Read its
breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery

crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; among them? Is it at the gateway? Or is it in
the temple? It is neither."
and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet
anchor of all your hopes.

Integrity Seminars: Special Report January 2020 6