In Ancient Israel, God told the Prophet Isaiah to warn the nation that they were “ever hearing, but never understanding” and “ever seeing, but never perceiving.” If the Ancient Israelites were ever to be healed from their iniquities, Isaiah told them, they must learn to see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts. (Isaiah 6:9-10).

George Washington faced similar frustrations as a leader. After the revolution, the new nation was sinking into chaos and depression because there was not a strong national government.

Why didn’t Americans understand and perceive the danger, and take action?

Washington explained that “the people” can only be “brought slowly into measures of public utility.” People “must feel before they will see.”

When it came to slavery, it was as if Americans had eyes, but did not see, and ears, but did not hear. Frederick Douglass and Harriett Beecher Stowe changed all that.

By enabling people to feel the horrors of slavery, they enabled people to see that slavery must be abolished!

Nevertheless, despite the efforts of Frederick Douglass, Harriett Beecher Stowe, and many others, only a small, despised minority of Americans were abolitionists before the Civil War.

Most northerners viewed slavery as a necessary evil. They denounced abolitionists for “stirring up trouble”.

Southerners praised the “peculiar institution” of American slavery as the best way of life for the supposedly lazy, stupid, inferior black race. Furthermore, Southerners claimed that the Bible supported the system of slavery. (Genesis 16:1-9; Ephesians 6:5-9).

Frederick Douglass denounced such spiritual blindness and deafness in a speech in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852, that he titled “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”.

He spoke with “a sad sense of the disparity between us” because “[t]he blessings in which you this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.”

Douglass explained to his white listeners: “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.”

Louder than the tumultuous joy of whites at their Fourth of July celebrations, he heard “the mournful wail of millions” with “heavy and grievous chains.” He mourned for “those bleeding children of sorrow.”

The “hideous and revolting” conduct of the nation meant that “America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.”

Therefore, “[s]tanding with God and the crushed and bleeding slave” and “in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon,” Douglass said that he would “dare to call into question and denounce . . . everything that serves to perpetuate slavery—the great sin and shame of America!”

Douglass refused to waste his time disputing whether slavery was wrong. He asked how it cannot be wrong:

“to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant . . ., to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters?”

Douglass told his audience:

“[t]he feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be aroused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”

”Otherwise, the celebration of the Fourth of July 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 a slave] mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy.”

To Douglass, all such celebrations of liberty in America were “a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

The sad Truth was that “[t]here is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”

Douglass concluded his speech with the horrifying thought that for “revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

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This blog is based on passages in my book Visions of America, at pages 63-65 (first published in 2004, together with Visions of the Church). For the supporting sources, please see the endnotes to those pages of my book.

For more of my thoughts inspired by Juneteenth, please read my blogs “Juneteenth: George Washington” and “Juneteenth: Frederick Douglass Learns To Read”.

For my thoughts on related themes, please read my blogs “Raising the Star-Spangled Banner—Americans”, “Racism Is America Gone Astray”, “The 500-Year Marathon To Overcome Racism”, “The ‘United States’ Compared to ‘America’”, “George Washington Refuses To Become a King”, “Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—Unifying Americans”, “Martin Luther King, Jr.—Restoring Hope and Giving a Vision”, “Nationalism Is Patriotism Gone Astray”, “How Do We Build a Civilization That Is Good—That Is Very Good?”, “We Need Inspiring Visions of a Bright Future. Why?”, “Speaking Up”, “Irresistible Hurricanes of the Holy Spirit”, “Parking Cars”, “St.  Francis of Assisi Made the Way of Jesus Great Again”, “Hypocrisy: Taking Away What You Gave”, “Pandemic Wisdom: Visions of America”, and “Pandemic Wisdom: Scattering the Church”.