Frederick Douglass And Independence Day, 1852

Musings on American independence from the perspective of a slave

America has a narrative - an origin story if you will - that tells its citizens and the rest of the world who we are. I mention it fairly regularly, including  just this past Monday, because belief in the narrative is so foundational to who America is today. It’s the source of so much of our internal conflict. It’s the stuff that Doctor Martin Luther King was referring to when he said, “All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper’.”

Land of the free…Live Free or Die…All men or created equal…With Liberty and Justice for all…a more perfect union. A land of meritocracy. A color blind society where everybody has the same chance at grabbing the brass ring. All that is required is a mix of hard work, patriotism, and honesty. American exceptionalism!! Greatest country on earth!

It’s a cheery, patriotic, optimistic, egalitarian narrative and it’s drilled into us so thoroughly from the get-go that it escapes us that it’s false.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Nikole Hannah-Jones: “What I’m arguing is that our founding ideals were great and powerful. Had we in fact built a country based on those founding ideals, then we would have the most amazing country the earth has ever seen.”

And so it was that in order to properly ring in Independence Day in 1852 - just 69 years after 8 long years of fighting the British to gain that hard-won freedom and exceptionalism - the good ladies of the Rochester NY Anti-Slavery Society decided to invite local celebrity Frederick Douglass to pontificate on the wonderfulness of America and American Freedom. A land where all men are created equal and entitled to the same things. Life, the pursuit of happiness, and best of all…liberty. So enthralled and blinded were they by the narrative that it escaped their notice that Douglass had been a slave who escaped his ‘owner’ by running away. Even way back in 1852 the narrative had already been thoroughly drilled into American heads.

The irony didn’t escape Douglass though and he wasn’t known for being shy. Delivering his address to an audience of about 600, Douglass acknowledged the signers of the Declaration of Independence as “truly great men.” But he then pointed out “the hypocrisy of the nation” where “the rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me….

“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 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, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

1852, while some Americans could still remember the war their fathers and grandfathers fought in the name of freedom, the narrative was more real to them. But here's the thing: Today, 172 years after the great war for our freedom from the tyranny and colonialism of King George the III, I cannot help but wonder if we let go of the mirage…the rhetoric of how free and equal all Americans are and how achievable the brass ring is…if we taught our full history in schools, warts and wonderfulness side-by-side…I wonder if we the people would be more aware and more active in forming that “more perfect Union, establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

I think that the last few years, and even the last few days in the Supreme Court, have shown us that freedom and democracy, once achieved, are not just automatically forever. Ahhh…we can all sit back, let down our guard, and relax into the comfort of democracy, freedom, and equality. Those things have to be fought for by every generation. There are always people, even prominent people, who want to take it away and remake America into something that works exclusively for them.

The other day I was behind a MAGA truck adorned with the typical stupid MAGA stickers. But amongst them I was surprised and even a bit uplifted to see words from one of my heroes, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, bumperized on the truck. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” The irony escaped this MAGA-head and I wondered what he has done for his country.

And this of semi-related interest: When a slave ran away from his owner, the owner placed ads in newspapers (American hero Benjamin Franklin made a small fortune from his paper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, running these ads) providing a description and offering a reward for the return of his property. Andrew Jackson went a step further offering an additional $10.00 for every hundred lashes applied to the runaway. I’m pretty sure he paid $30.00, the equivalence of $1,135.00 today, for the return of a bloody corpse.

Jackson was also wholly responsible for the Trail of Tears - the genocidal policy that removed or killed all of the Southeastern Indigenous People to Oklahoma - the Indian Territories - killing thousands in the process, in order to make their land available for plantations. This is the guy that America honors on our $20.00 bill. The Obama administration was on the cusp of finally replacing Jackson with actual hero and slave and Harriet Tubman. But then the new president, an admirer of Jackson, decided the monumental change would be too expensive and disruptive. Remember who Jackson was and wonder why we honor him when you find yourself with a twenty.

Library of Congress