ay, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly
over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be
treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach
before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is
"American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics
from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the
American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare,
with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never
looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the
declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the
conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is
false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to
be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding
slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is
outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the
Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon,
dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can
command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery--the great sin and
shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use
the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape
me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is
not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say it is just in this
circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a
favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and
denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would
be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there
is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you
have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this
country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man?
That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders
themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government.
They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the
slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if
committed by a black man (no mat