The Legacy of Frederick Douglass
A speech
*Author’s note: This is a speech I gave at the First Annual Frederick Douglass Celebration Event hosted by the Branford Republican Town Committee on June 5, 2024
Thank you so much to the Branford Republican Town Committee for welcoming me to the First Annual Frederick Douglass Celebration Event. I truly am humbled and consider this a great honor. And I suspect this will be the first of many such events — great movements have humble origins. And though I’m not from Branford, I am a proud Republican; and am proud to help in any way I can to promote Republican ideals: those being the ability to live freely, achieving your full potential and not being oppressed under the heel of an onerous government.
I especially want to thank my friends Victoria Verderame and Dominic Rapini for this opportunity to reflect on the event’s namesake. At my day job at Yankee Institute, I write a historical newsletter called Hidden in the Oak, where we highlight historical facts that — we hope — fill you with a sense of pride about the state we call home.
I believe that by studying our past, and understanding where we’ve started and how far we’ve come, we will cherish and love the principles that our countrymen have fought and died for. Today, we have seen how history has been falsely corrupted by the Left from Howard Zinn, the 1619 Project and other Critical Theorists. For a philosophical movement supposedly opposed to alleged institutional racism and colonial exploitation, it’s ironic their solution is not liberation from government control that perpetuates these injustices; but more government.
In truth, the Progressive Left — as seen by the recent protests on college campuses that actually hate other groups of people — is indicative of a society that has resorted to tribalism and has lost its moral compass. And that moral compass is reliant on the belief in God, free will, and that your fellow neighbor has an inherent dignity.
Or perhaps, these college students and supporters are simply ignorant — taught only to focus on the sins of our founders, rather than reconciliation. I would surmise these cherry-pickers of history will suffer the same condemnation from subsequent generations. As the Bible tells us, those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
I bring this up because some of Frederick Douglass’ words were used to legitimize the 2020 George Floyd riots across major U.S. cities, which, in my estimation, was catastrophic to America. They were not peaceful. And they were not protests. Those riots that led to deaths, destroyed property and pitted neighbor against neighbor demonstrated just how quickly our commonalities can disintegrate into mob rule.
It is my diagnosis — and maybe yours as well — that this ugly state of America’s soul is because we’ve deprived ourselves and our children of what makes our country a good force in the world. Douglass is the perfect model for our time: one who suffered through the worst institutions ever devised by man — which is still going on in other parts of the world — who chose not victimhood, but to champion liberty.
But, to champion liberty, he had to be critical. Though not in the same manner as Critical Theorists today. In the antebellum years of the Civil War, our country was morally corrupt by enslaving millions of African Americans. Yet, like Jonah preaching to the Ninevites to repent from their evil ways, he had to change America’s soul — that it was not right for a man to own another man.
Yet, as I mentioned earlier, Progressives cherry-picked one speech he gave in 1852 titled “What is the 4th of July to a Slave?”
In this speech, Douglass, in his mid-30 years, did highlight the hypocrisy of America, saying that the celebration of Independence Day is “a sham,” adding that it is a “thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.” He goes on criticizing indifferent Christian people, saying that, while they may cry for the plights of others, they ignore the cries and wrongs committed toward the American slave.
We have to remember that context matters: this was only two years after Congress approved the Fugitive Slave Act, which was an evil law. During this fiery, justified sermon, he does not offer as a solution the destruction of America. Nor does he consider the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution as evil doctrines. Instead, he says “the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? Or is it in the temple? It is neither.”
Does this sound like a man who loathes American principles? He could’ve relented to despair. He lived through hell and escaped it — and that hell was perpetuated by a government that saw him as an other simply due to the color of his skin.
Yet he did not despair. In fact, Douglass said, “There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain,” adding, “I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from ‘the Declaration of Independence,’ the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.”
There are writers like Dr. Marvin McMickle — pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist — who suggest that simply because Frederick Douglass was a Republican in the 19th century, that does not mean he would likely be in the Republican Party of today. Truth is, we will never know.
But we do know this: the Republican Party, like at its founding, still stands for the American people to fulfill their own destinies, without the burdens of big government. A powerful centralized government is where liberty dies. And where people die in the millions.
Yet communism hasn’t been tried in its truest form, right? Progressivism is not only Jacobin, but also a philosophical heir to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. These woke movements not only imprison detractors and lovers of liberty — but seek to chain the minds to groupthink, depriving the human spirit from our ultimate source of freedom, that being God.
Douglass loved God. He loved liberty. And he detested government — and a people — that enforced and turned a blind eye to human suffering. So, I can surmise, that he would see the collapse of American ideals — and outright hatred toward its founding — to be wrong. And to lose them, he would view as a travesty.
So, like Douglass, I leave you with this hope: our beliefs are not necessarily beliefs, but truths — all men are created equal. Everyone has free will. From conception to natural death, we believe every human life has an inherent dignity. But the threats to liberty will try to smear it, shaming America for falling short of its ideals. The darkness will try to prevail against the fiber of your soul.
But let us emulate Frederick Douglass: hold onto hope. Champion liberty. Get back up and into the fight. We cannot be afraid. You and I were destined to be born in this time for a reason — your neighbor, your community, our state, and our country needs your courage to speak and to act; just like Douglass did.
If we do so, it can start healing our nation’s soul.
Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America.