How Enslaved Americans Responded To July 4 Declaration Of Independence

The summer air in Rochester, New York, hung thick with heat and celebration. It was July 5, 1852, a day after cannons had fired, flags waved and towns across America had burst into patriotic jubilation to mark the 76th anniversary of the nation's independence. Inside Corinthian Hall, a different kind of gathering was taking place.

The man who rose to the podium was Frederick Douglass, once enslaved, now one of the most powerful voices for abolition in the country. He had been invited to speak on July 4 but chose instead to wait a day as per Time.

In front of an audience of nearly 600, he began by acknowledging the Founding Fathers and the brilliance of the ideas they had set into motion in 1776. But then, his voice sharpened. "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine," he declared. The applause quietened by then.

Douglass asked a now-famous question, "What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?"

As Douglass spoke that day in 1852, slavery was still legal in half the country. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 had recently passed, forcing free states to return escaped enslaved people to bondage.

As historian Dr Allison Wiltz later explained, many enslaved people saw July 4 as a day of mourning. Newspaper archives from the era are filled with ads for runaway slaves, many of whom chose the national holiday as the moment to make their escape, as per The Washington Post.

"The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common," Douglass said in his speech. "The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn."

"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him... the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham... your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery... a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages," his words reverberated across a room listening in pin-drop silence.

During the Revolutionary War (1773-1783), many Black Americans saw that the Founders' promise of liberty excluded them. Thousands instead turned to the British, who offered real freedom in exchange for loyalty. In 1775, Lord Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, promised emancipation to enslaved people who escaped Patriot masters to join British forces. Soon, units like the Royal Ethiopian Regiment and Black Pioneers included these freedom-seekers, some wearing sashes that read "Liberty to Slaves."

Some of these escapees became prominent historical figures. Harry Washington, once enslaved by George Washington, fled in 1776, joined the Black Pioneers, and later resettled in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone. Colonel Tye (born Titus Cornelius) escaped from New Jersey and rose to become one of the most feared Loyalist guerrilla leaders of the Revolutionary War.

Frederick Douglass had produced what historian David Blight calls "the greatest speech he's ever delivered, of the hundreds of speeches he delivered in his life."

On July 4, 1862, with the Civil War raging and emancipation not yet guaranteed, Frederick Douglass delivered another Independence Day speech. Where he had once referred to the Founders as "your fathers," he now called them "your fathers, and my fathers."

Six months later, in January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a landmark executive order aimed at ending slavery in the Confederate states.

A decade after the Civil War, Frederick Douglass returned to the podium on July 5. With the rise of white supremacist violence and the hate group Ku Klux Klan, Douglass asked, "If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will ?"

Though slavery had ended, America's commitment to racial equality was still uncertain.