argument, is
needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I 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 Fourth 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 denunciations 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,{353} 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 these United
States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies
and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search
out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the
side of the every-day practices of this nation, and you will say with
me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America
reigns without a rival.

THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE. Extract from an Oration, at Rochester, July
5, 1852

Take the American slave trade, which, we are told by the papers, is
especially prosperous just now. Ex-senator Benton tells us that the
price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show
that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities
of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and
cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every
year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states this trade
is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradist