{"id":42195,"date":"2024-07-04T10:00:29","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T15:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicbard\/?p=42195"},"modified":"2024-07-04T10:04:16","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T15:04:16","slug":"a-thought-from-frederick-douglass-on-the-fourth-of-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicbard\/2024\/07\/a-thought-from-frederick-douglass-on-the-fourth-of-july\/","title":{"rendered":"A Thought From Frederick Douglass on The Fourth of July"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Frederick Douglass<\/b> \u00a0(c.<\/abbr>\u2009February 1817\u00a0or February 1818 \u2013 February 20, 1895) was an American\u00a0social reformer<\/a>,\u00a0abolitionist<\/a>, orator, writer, and statesman. He became the most important leader of the movement for\u00a0African-American<\/a>\u00a0civil rights<\/a>\u00a0in the 19th century.<\/p>\n

After escaping from\u00a0slavery in Maryland<\/a>\u00a0in 1838, Douglass became a national leader of the\u00a0abolitionist movement<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Massachusetts<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0New York<\/a>, during which he gained fame for his oratory \u00a0and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to claims by supporters of slavery that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.\u00a0Northerners<\/a>\u00a0at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave<\/a><\/i> (1845)- Wikipedia Entry<\/p>\n

A speech by Frederick Douglass given on Monday, July 5, 1852 at Rochester, New York. The oration was published as the pamphlet\u00a0Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester by Frederick Douglass, July 5th, 1852<\/i> the same year. What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? \u2013 Wikisource, the free online library<\/a><\/p>\n

It offers some thoughts about independence and freedom on the day we celebrate on July 4th every year.<\/p>\n

RELIGION IN ENGLAND AND RELIGION IN AMERICA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces,<\/strong> <\/span>the Buxtons, the Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement\u00a0there<\/i>\u00a0was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement.<\/p>\n