Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester · 1852 pamphlet, p. 16

Fellow citizens; above your national, tumultous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget. them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this…

Frederick Douglass · 5 July 1852
Lee, Mann & Co., Rochester, 1852. Reading text from Literature in Context (University of Virginia), checked against the Rochester pamphlet where corrections are recorded; verse and source pagination retained.
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