Frederick Douglass' OTHER Fourth of July Speech: "The Slaveholders' Rebellion"

On July 4, 1862, Douglass made another speech describing the stakes and promise of the Civil War.

Reading this speech by Douglass was so revealing…and time consuming! I’ve written this post to distill some of its most important points. If you’d like to read more of this content, please become a paid subscriber today!

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The formerly enslaved and renowned abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, offered a famous oration called “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

In the 1852 speech, he eloquently pointed out the bitter irony of celebrating liberty while simultaneously enslaving millions of Black people in the United States.

In light of this hypocrisy, Douglass asked, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”

But this is not the only speech Douglass gave on the topic of Independence Day.

Ten years later, Frederick Douglass’ delivered his other fourth of July speech. It is called “The Slaveholder’s Rebellion.”

Douglass gave his speech on July 4, 1862—just over a year into the Civil War. What is striking is that many of Douglass’ observations, warnings, and predictions remain so relevant today.

The context of the speech matters immensely to Douglass’ choice of themes. The Emancipation Proclamation had not yet been issued. And while white people and President Abraham Lincoln insisted it was a war mainly to preserve the Union, Douglass, like millions of Black people, knew the crux of the war was slavery and its future.

All but the willfully blind or the malignantly traitorous, know and confess that this whole movement, which now so largely distracts the country, and threatens ruin to the nation, has its root and its sap, its trunk and its branches, and the bloody fruit it bears only from the one source of all abounding abomination, and that is slavery.

In his speech, delivered to a crowd of about 2,000 people in rural New York, Douglass called the Civil War the “slaveholders’ mutiny.” In his view, wealthy white plantation owners insisted on the perpetuation of slavery to preserve their power and wealth. This planter class was even willing to send their impoverished white kinsmen off to war in order to preserve slavery as a moneymaking enterprise.

Additionally, in the middle of 1862 the North was widely seen as losing the war, or at least of grossly mismanaging it. In Douglass’ view, much of the blame rested with the Union’s military leaders. Douglass excoriates Union General George B. McClellan, for example, as a “proslavery” white man whose “sympathies are with the rebels.”

Douglass’ wide-ranging remarks touched on a theme familiar even in the present day—the tendency to blame racial conflict on the people fighting against racism.

There is however one false theory of the origin of the war to which a moment’s reply may be properly given here. It is this. The abolitionists by their insane and unconstitutional attempt to abolish slavery, have brought on the war…When therefore I hear a man denouncing abolitionists on account of the war, I know that I am listening to a man who either does not know what he is talking about, or to one who is a traitor in disguise.

Defenders of the racial hierarchy frequently attempt to dodge responsibility by alleging that the people raising the cry for racial justice are the source of the trouble. Such persons are penalized for refusing to stay silent about racism. It is like blaming the person who pulls the fire alarm for starting the fire.

In another disturbing parallel with the present day, Douglass points out how the defenders of slavery are the arch-enemies of freedom—the very principle that the Fourth of July holiday represents.

For this cause [the defenders of slavery] hate free society, free schools, free states, free speech, the freedom asserted in the Declaration of Independence, and guaranteed in the Constitution.

In this era of defunding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, of banning books from libraries and schools, of rolling back civil rights and protections in the form of Supreme Court rulings, the continuity between the authoritarianism of slaveholders of the 19th century and the far-right of the 21st century is plain.

Far-right politicians, lawyers, judges, and religious leaders have indicated that learning about the racial history of the United States, even reading speeches such as this one from Frederick Douglass, are anti-American and a threat to their power. They, therefore, seek to control, revise, or limit the promulgation of such materials.

Douglass realizes what is happening in his day and makes clear the collusion of personnel who all have the intent of consolidating their power regardless of how their policies affect the masses of people.

While all this was going on, lawyers, priests and politicians were at work upon national prejudice against the colored man. They raised the cry and put it into the mouth of the ignorant, and vulgar and narrow minded, that “this is the white man’s country,” and other cries which readily catch the ear of the crowd.

For a powerful segment of the U.S. population, a unified, democratic republic form of government could be tolerated as long as they could control it and see that their slaveholding interests were met. As soon as that was not the case, they were willing to destroy the union to uphold their own power.

While the slaveholders could hold the reins of government they could and did pervert the free principles of the constitution to slavery, and could afford to continue in the union, but when they saw that they could no longer control the union as they had done for sixty years before, they appealed to the sword and struck for a government which should forever shut out all light from the southern conscience, and all hope of Emancipation from the southern slave.

In a similar manner, the rioters on January 6, 2021 were willing to violently overthrow a lawful presidential election as soon as their preferred leader did not win. They assembled en masse to assert through physical force that the government properly belonged to people like them, and if millions of voters disagreed, then they would use any means necessary to seize the reins of government.

Then, as now, the defenders of liberty, those who call the nation to live up to the ideals it espoused in the Declaration of Independence, have the ability to form a “more perfect union.” They just need to realize that freedom and equality for Black people will mean greater freedom and equality for all.

Let the loyal army but inscribe upon its banner, Emancipation and protection to all who will rally under it, and no power could prevent a stampede from slavery, such as the world has not witnessed since the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea.

In the Civil War, had Lincoln and other politicians more quickly realized that emancipation was the only path toward victory, the Civil War might have ended much sooner. Douglass, as with many other Black people, understood that the Union could marshal the moral force as well as the military force necessary to win the war if they promoted emancipation.

What was true in 1862 is also true in 2023. This can be a nation that stands as a beacon of freedom and flourishing, if we act on behalf of the most marginalized in our communities. No one is free until everyone is free.

Douglass concludes with a sober warning to his listeners. He says that if they try to end the war without ending slavery, then they will have only delayed another conflagration. Instead, if the people of the North wanted to see an end to disunity and bloodshed, they had to commit themselves to fully and immediately abolishing slavery.

The question is, shall this stupendous and most outrageous war be finally and forever ended? or shall it be merely suspended for a time, and again revived with increased and aggravated fury in the future? Can you afford a repetition of this costly luxury? Do you wish to transmit to your children the calamities and sorrows of to-day? The way to either class of these results is open to you.

Shortly after Douglass’ speech, “The Slaveholder Rebellion,” Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation would go into effect on January 1, 1863. But event though the Civil War led to the 13th Amendment and the abolition of slavery, the ideology of white supremacy remained.

Immediately after the Civil War white “Redeemers” used violence and political machinations to revivify white rule in the South and beyond. The “Lost Cause” myth became the accepted version of events, and many leaders shrank back from the long, necessary work of uplifting Black people after centuries of enslavement.

Today, Frederick Douglass’ analysis and predictions remain salient.

Now, we, too, stand at a point in our history where two different results confront us. We can continue to compromise with racism and see the erosion of freedom or we can decisively confront authoritarianism and insist on a multi-racial, inclusive democracy.

We, the people, have the power to make the 4th of July either a celebration of liberty or a mockery of it.

Read the entirety of Douglass’ speech. The Slaveholders’ Rebellion

What are your views on celebrating the 4th of July? Is it a tradition, are you conflicted, do you abstain? Comment below.