【英文文学】Abolition Fanaticism in New York.docx

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1、【英文文学】Abolition Fanaticism in New YorkFLAMINGABOLITION SPEECHDELIVERED BY THE RUNAWAY SLAVE,FREDERICK DOUGLASS,At the Anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society,IN THE TABERNACLE, NEW YORK, MAY 11, 1847.The following Report will show to Marylanders, how a runaway slave talks, when he reaches t

2、he Abolition regions of the country. This presumptive negro was even present at the London Worlds Temperance Convention, last year; and in spite of all the efforts of the American Delegates to prevent it, he palmed off his Abolition bombast upon an audience of 7000 persons! Of this high-handed measu

3、re he now makes his boast in New-York, one of the hot-beds of Abolitionism. The Report is given exactly as published in the New-York Tribune. The reader will make his own comments.Mr. Douglass was introduced to the audience by Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Esq., President of the American Anti-Slavery Society,

4、 and, upon taking the platform, was greeted with enthusiastic and long-continued applause by the vast concourse which filled the spacious Tabernacle to overflowing. As soon as the audience became silent, Mr. D. with, at first, a slight degree of embarrassment, addressed them as follows:I am very gla

5、d to be here. I am very glad to be present at this Anniversaryglad again to mingle my voice with those with whom I have stood identified, with those with whom I have labored, for the last seven years, for the purpose of undoing the burdens of my brethren, and hastening the day of their emancipation.

6、I do not doubt but that a large portion of this audience will be disappointed, both by the manner and the matter of what I shall this day set forth. The extraordinary and unmerited eulogies which have been showered upon me, here and elsewhere, have done much to create expectations which, I am well a

7、ware, I can never hope to gratify. I am here, a simple man, knowing what I have experienced in Slavery, knowing it to be a bad system, and desiring, by all Christian means, to seek its overthrow. I am not here to please you with an eloquent speech, with a refined and logical address, but to speak to

8、 you the sober truths of a heart overborne with gratitude to God that we have in this land, cursed as it is with Slavery, so noble a band to second my efforts and the efforts of others in the noble work of undoing the Yoke of Bondage, with which the majority of the States of this union are now unfor

9、tunately cursed.Since the last time I had the pleasure of mingling my voice with the voices of my friends on this platform, many interesting and even trying events have occurred to me. I have experienced, within the last eighteen or twenty months, many incidents, all of which it would be interesting

10、 to communicate to you; but many of these I shall be compelled to pass over at this time, and confine my remarks to giving a general outline of the manner and spirit with which I have been hailed abroad, and welcomed at the different places which I have visited during my absence of twenty months.You

11、 are aware, doubtless, that my object in going from this country, was to get beyond the reach of the clutch of the man who claimed to own me as his property. I had written a book giving a history of that portion of my life spent in the gall and bitterness and degradation of Slavery, and in which I a

12、lso identified my oppressors as the perpetrators of some of the most atrocious crimes. This had deeply incensed them against me, and stirred up within them the purpose of revenge, and my whereabouts being known, I believed it necessary for me, if I would preserve my liberty, to leave the shores of A

13、merica, and take up my abode in some other land, at least until the excitement occasioned by the publication of my Narrative had subsided. I went to England, Monarchical England, to get rid of Democratic Slavery, and I must confess that, at the very threshold, I was satisfied that I had gone to the

14、right place. Say what you will of Englandof the degradationof the povertyand there is much of it theresay what you will of the oppression and suffering going on in England at this time, there is Liberty therethere is Freedom there, not only for the white man, but for the black man also. The instant

15、I stepped upon the shore, and looked into the faces of the crowd around me, I saw in every man a recognition of my manhood, and an absence, a perfect absence, of everything like that disgusting hate with which we are pursued in this country. Cheers. I looked around in vain to see in any mans face a

16、token of the slightest aversion to me on account of my complexion. Even the cabmen demeaned themselves to me as they did to other men, and the very dogs and pigs of old England treated me as a man! I cannot, however, my friends, dwell upon this anti-Prejudice, or rather the many illustrations of the

17、 absence of Prejudice against Color in Englandbut will proceed, at once, to defend the Right and Duty of invoking English aid and English sympathy for the overthrow of American Slavery, for the education of Colored Americans, and to forward in every way, the interests of humanity; inasmuch as the ri

18、ght of appealing to England for aid in overthrowing Slavery in this country, has been called in question, in public meetings and by the press, in this city.I cannot agree with my friend Mr. Garrison in relation to my love and attachment to this land. I have no love for America, as such; I have no pa

19、triotism. I have no country. What country have I? The Institutions of this country do not know medo not recognize me as a man. I am not thought of, spoken of, in any direction, out of the Anti-Slavery ranks, as a man. I am not thought of or spoken of, except as a piece of property belonging to some

20、Christian Slaveholder, and all the Religious and Political Institutions of this Country alike pronounce me a Slave and a chattel. Now, in such a country as this I cannot have patriotism. The only thing that links me to this land is my family, and the painful consciousness that here there are 3,000,0

21、00 of my fellow creatures groaning beneath the iron rod of the worst despotism that could be devised even in Pandemonium,that here are men and brethren who are identified with me by their complexion, identified with me by their hatred of Slavery, identified with me by their love and aspirations for

22、Liberty, identified with me by the stripes upon their backs, their inhuman wrongs and cruel sufferings. This, and this only, attaches me to this land, and brings me here to plead with you, and with this country at large, for the disenthrallment of my oppressed countrymen, and to overthrow this syste

23、m of Slavery which is crushing them to the earth. How can I love a country that dooms 3,000,000 of my brethren, some of them my own kindred, my own brothers, my own sisters, who are now clanking the chains of Slavery upon the plains of the South, whose warm blood is now making fat the soil of Maryla

24、nd and of Alabama, and over whose crushed spirits rolls the dark shadow of Oppression, shutting out and extinguishing forever the cheering rays of that bright Sun of Liberty, lighted in the souls of all Gods children by the omnipotent hand of Deity itself? How can I, I say, love a country thus curse

25、d, thus bedewed with the blood of my brethren? A Country, the Church of which, and the Government of which, and the Constitution of which are in favor of supporting and perpetuating this monstrous system of injustice and blood? I have not, I cannot have, any love for this country, as such, or for it

26、s Constitution. I desire to see it overthrown as speedily as possible and its Constitution shivered in a thousand fragments, rather than this foul curse should continue to remain as now. Hisses and cheers.Chapter 2In all this, my friends, let me make myself understood. I do not hate America as again

27、st England, or against any other country or land. I love Humanity all over the globe. I am anxious to see Righteousness prevail in all directions. I am anxious to see Slavery overthrown here; but, I never appealed to Englishmen in a manner calculated to awaken feelings of hatred or disgust, or to in

28、flame their prejudices toward America as a nation, or in a manner provocative of national jealousy or ill-will; but I always appealed to their conscienceto the higher and nobler feelings of the people of that country, to enlist them in this cause. I always appealed to their manhood, that which prece

29、ded their being Englishmen, (to quote an expression of my friend Phillips,) I appealed to them as men, and I had a right to do so. They are men, and the Slave is a man, and we have a right to call upon all men to assist in breaking his bonds, let them be born when and live where they may.But it is a

30、sked, What good will this do? or What good has it done? Have you not irritated, have you not annoyed your American friends and the American people rather than done them good? I admit that we have irritated them. They deserve to be irritated. I am anxious to irritate the American people on this quest

31、ion. As it is in physics, so in morals, there are cases which demand irritation and counter-irritation. The conscience of the American public needs this irritation, and I would blister it all over from centre to circumference, until it gives signs of a purer and a better life than it is now manifest

32、ing to the world.But why expose the sins of one nation in the eyes of another? Why attempt to bring one people under the odium of another people? There is much force in this question. I admit that there are sins in almost every country which can be best removed by means confined exclusively to their

33、 immediate locality. But such evils and such sins pre-suppose the existence of a moral power in their immediate locality sufficient to accomplish the work of renovation. But, where, pray, can we go to find moral power in this nation sufficient to overthrow Slavery? To what institution, to what party

34、 shall we apply for aid? I say we admit that there are evils which can be best removed by influences confined to their immediate locality. But in regard to American Slavery it is not so. It is such a giant crime, so darkening to the soul, so blinding in its moral influence, so well calculated to bla

35、st and corrupt all the humane principles of our nature, so well adapted to infuse its own accursed spirit into all around it, that the people among whom it exists have not the moral power to abolish it. Shall we go to the Church for this influence? We have heard its character described. Shall we go

36、to Politicians or Political Parties? Have they the moral power necessary to accomplish this mighty task? They have not. What are they doing at this moment? Voting supplies for Slaveryvoting supplies for the extension, the stability, the perpetuation of Slavery in this land. What is the press doing?

37、The same. The pulpit? Almost the same. I do not flatter myself that there is moral power in the land sufficient to overthrow Slavery, and I welcome the aid of England. And that aid will come. The growing intercourse between England and this country, by means of steam navigation, the relaxation of th

38、e protective system in various countries in Europe, gives us an opportunity to bring in the aid, the moral and Christian aid of those living on the other side of the Atlantic. We welcome it in the language of the resolution. We entreat our British friends to continue to send their remonstrances acro

39、ss the deep against Slavery in this land. And these remonstrances will have a powerful effect here. Sir, the Americans may tell of their ability, and I have no doubt they have it, to keep back the invaders hosts, to repulse the strongest force that its enemies may send against this country. It may b

40、oast, and rightly boast of its capacity to build its ramparts so high that no foe can hope to scale themto render them so impregnable as to defy the assaults of the world. But, sir, there is one thing it cannot resist, come from what quarter it may. It cannot resist TRUTH. You cannot build your fort

41、s so strong, nor your ramparts so high, nor arm yourselves so powerfully, as to be able to withstand the overwhelming MORAL SENTIMENT against Slavery now flowing into this land. For example: Prejudice against Color is continually becoming weaker in this land; and why? Because the whole European Cont

42、inent denounces this sentiment as unworthy a lodgment in the breast of an enlightened community. And the American abroad dares not now, even in a public conveyance, to lift his voice in defence of this disgusting prejudice.I do not mean to say that there are no practices abroad which deserve to rece

43、ive an influence, favorable to their extermination, from America. I am most glad to know that Democratic Freedomnot the bastard Democracy which, while loud in its protestations of regard for Liberty and Equality, builds up Slavery, and, in the name of Freedom fights the battles of Despotismis making

44、 great strides in Europe. We see, abroad, in England especially, happy indications of the progress of American principles. A little while ago England was cursed by a Corn monopolyby that giant monopoly which snatched from the mouths of the famishing Poor the bread which you sent from this land. The

45、communitythe people of England demanded its destruction, and they have triumphed! We have aided them, and they aid us, and the mission of the two nations, henceforth, is to serve each other.Sir, it is said that, when abroad, I misrepresented my country on this question. I am not aware of any misrepr

46、esentation. I stated facts and facts only. A gentleman of your own City, Rev. Dr. Cox, has taken particular pains to stigmatize me as having introduced the subject of Slavery illegitimately into the Worlds Temperance Convention. But what was the fact? I went to that Convention, not as a DelegateI we

47、nt into it by the invitation of a Committee of the Convention. I suppose most of you know the circumstances, but I wish to say one word in relation to the spirit and the principle which animated me at that meeting. I went into it at the invitation of the Committee, and spoke not only at their urgent

48、 request, but by public announcement. I stood on the platform on the evening referred to, and heard some eight or ten Americans address the 7,000 people assembled in that vast Hall. I heard them speak of the Temperance movement in the land. I heard them eulogize the Temperance Societies in the highe

49、st terms, calling on England to follow their example (and England may follow them with advantage to herself;) but I heard no reference made to the 3,000,000 of people in this country who are denied the privilege, not only of Temperance, but of all other Societies. I heard not a word of the American Slaves, who, if seven of them were found together at a Temperance meeting or any other place, would be scourged and beaten by their cruel tyrants. Yes, nine-and-thirty lashes is the penalty require