Frederick Douglass’s Classic 1871 Decoration Day Speech
As we speak is Memorial Day, once we honor members of the armed forces who’ve fallen in battle. Memorial Day originated as Ornament Day, an event to honor troopers who died within the Civil Warfare. Frederick Douglass’s 1871 Ornament Day speech, delivered at Arlington Nationwide Cemetery, often is the greatest-ever deal with related to this event. Within the course of, he additionally supplied invaluable ideas on how we should always bear in mind the Civil Warfare. Test it out! Here is an excerpt:
Darkish and unhappy would be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its best benefactors. The providing we convey to-day is due alike to the patriot troopers useless and their noble comrades who nonetheless dwell; for, whether or not residing or useless, whether or not in time or eternity, the loyal troopers who imperiled all for nation and freedom are one and inseparable….
When the darkish and vengeful spirit of slavery, all the time formidable, preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern coronary heart and stirred all of the malign parts of discord, when our nice Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government all through the world, had reached the purpose of supreme peril, when the Union of those states was torn and lease asunder on the heart, and the armies of a huge insurrection got here forth with broad blades and bloody palms to destroy the very foundations of American society, the unknown braves who flung themselves into the yawning chasm, the place cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell. They died for his or her nation.
We’re generally requested, within the identify of patriotism, to overlook the deserves of this fearful battle, and to recollect with equal admiration those that struck on the nation’s life and those that struck to reserve it, those that fought for slavery and those that fought for liberty and justice.
I’m no minister of malice. I might not strike the fallen. I might not repel the repentant; however could my “proper hand overlook her crafty and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,” if I overlook the distinction between the events to that horrible, protracted, and bloody battle….
The essence and significance of our devotions right here to-day are to not be present in the truth that the boys whose stays fill these graves have been courageous in battle. If we met merely to indicate our sense of bravery, we should always discover sufficient on either side to kindle admiration….
However we’re not right here to applaud manly braveness, save because it has been displayed in a noble trigger. We should always remember that victory to the insurrection meant dying to the republic…. [I]f now we’ve got a united nation, not cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage…, we’re indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble military who relaxation in these honored graves throughout us.
The Ornament Day speech is only one of a number of Douglas speeches that need to be better-known. I gave just a few different examples right here.
