Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Best Defense of Southern Secession I have ever read.

During the 1850s, Frederick Douglass typically spent about six months of the year travelling extensively, giving lectures. During one winter -- the winter of 1855-1856 -- he gave about 70 lectures during a tour that covered four to five thousand miles. And his speaking engagements did not halt at the end of a tour. From his home in Rochester, New York, he took part in local abolition-related events.

On July 5, 1852, Douglass gave a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, held at Rochester's Corinthian Hall. It was biting oratory, in which the speaker told his audience, "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn." And he asked them, "Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?"

Within the now-famous address is what historian Philip S. Foner has called "probably the most moving passage in all of Douglass' speeches."


What, to the American slave, is your 4th 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 sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, 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 the United States, at this very hour.

Thank you Sir! You seem to be the only one smart enough to see what I meant as humour.

Guess that He had never heard of those places that had Cannibalism and such stuff? Maybe instead of going around the United States and giving speeches, He should have looked at the rest of the world. miles

No, he was pretty much spot on.

If you believe that then you are ignorant of many civilizations of antiquity. Slavery was evil and wrong. But to say the USA was as bad or worse than anyplace else at that given time, or any given time is simply ludicrous.

No, he was FOS. Caniballism, female genital mutilation, slavery, genocide, and a myriad other horrors occurred then in Africa and the Middle East - and still occur today.

He wants to bitch about slavery here 150 years ago, he should go eliminate it in today's world.

Between slavery, the Trail of Tears, reservations, and the treatment of the Chinese and the Irish, 19th century America really was a chief civil rights violator. It was criminal.

Civil rights was not a big issue anywhere in the world, in the 19th century. miles

I'm no Confederate apologizer, but you can't make schist up that'd be any funnier than that right there.

Turn that righteous gaze a little further afield during that time frame and get back to us.

This, in spades.

Damn, when I thought you couldn't get dumber you outdo yourself.

DAMN! JUST DAMN! Anal Glaucoma at its finest!


Your head is stuck so far up your ass if you ever pull it out the popping sound will be heard from coast to coast.

You folks are really classy.

Carpetbaggers deserve whatever they get.

So, can you take BillyGoatGruff up on his challenge, or not?

Start, perhaps, with the British Empire during the same time period. I'm sure the Irish, Indians, Africans, Boors, and native Australians were entralled with the treatment they received from the Brits during that time. The French were another bunch that ought to be considered as you look around during that time period; real peaches they were, at home and abroad.

Go then, perhaps, to the Mongols and Chinese; always bastions of civility. Oh, and don't leave out the Muslims in Africa or the Middle East for good measure.

Douglas was FOS and pandering to the abolitionists in New England to support his lifestyle and "career" as a speaker. Remember, of course, that these were the SAME people who themselves wanted to secede over the Mexican-American War in the 1830s. Oh, and they were the SAME people who made fortunes off of the slave trade (before they got rich and decided it was wrong, conveniently) with the shipping industry. They were the SAME people who were STILL making fortunes off of slavery by having the Federal government mandate that Southern raw goods be shipped North for processing and overseas sale instead of shipped out directly (complete with a Federal Navy blockade and interdiction of Southern merchant ships to enforce this monopoly). Hell, they were the SAME people who put together the U.S. Army to "solve the Indian problem" in the West to make it safe for Northern railroads and businesses to expand westward.

That's just a couple tips of icebergs out there looming in front of your ship of nonsense.

In fact, the United States was the only place on the planet these people could go to to escape what they left. Im sure what they left were bastions of civil rights, which of course is why they fled.....

KMA Dooshmike.

Don't forget the Dutch and the Portuguese and their respective colonies.

And the Russians and the Ottoman Turks

Dont forget how peaceful Prussia was in the 1800s....