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Speech at the Anniversary of West Indian Emancipation
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147 speechatthe anniversary ofWest indian emancipation August 4, 1853 Flushing, New York This speech was made at an outdoor celebration in Flushing, today’s borough of Queens in New York City. The event was the antislavery movement’s version of an Independence Day picnic, and indeed, the setting brought forth in all of the orators a style of Fourth of July oratory popular during that period. The celebration of “West Indian Emancipation,” commemorated the nineteenth anniversary of the British emancipation, in 1834, of enslaved people in Caribbean colonies, then called the West Indies. This was, of course, decades before the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves in the United States. Abolitionists loved playing on the irony of “the cradle of liberty” being outdone in progress for human liberation by its colonial “mother country.” The National Anti-Slavery Standard, news organ of the American AntiSlavery Society, reported that participants came by steamer boat from Fulton Street in Manhattan. Heavy rain the day before had discouraged some from attending, but those who braved the weather saw the sun come out at 10:15 a.m. “over a fine view of the grove . . . on a bluff-like elevation.” The chair, New York Anti-Slavery Society President Lauren Wetmore, opened the event, declaring that the participants were gathered to celebrate “the greatest event of modern times, 800,000 persons transformed from chattel[s] to free men.” Robert Hamilton and Ezekial Dias, described by the Standard as “two colored men,” sang a hymn to the tune of a Scottish melody. William Lloyd Garrison, detained by a railroad accident, arrived late and was greeted with great applause. After a recess for picnicking, Garrison spoke at some length “to hearty applause,” followed by Ernestine L. Rose and other speakers. While this is Rose’s first extant speech on the abolition of slavery, it was almost certainly not her first speech on the subject, judging by her account, contained within this document, of her visit in 1847 to South Carolina, as well as by other reports. The text of Rose’s speech (as part of a report of the entire event) was reproduced in both the August 13, 1853, edition of The National Anti-Slavery Standard and the August 19, 1853, edition of the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s paper. The fact that the speech has survived and is known to modern readers is due in no small measure to its rediscovery by Morris U. Schappes, a historian of secular Jewish life in the United States, and subsequent publication, with commentary by Schappes, in the Journal of Negro History (1949, 344–55). n Friends—I can hardly leave this place without raising my voice in unison with those who have spoken here. Indeed, the exercises of this celebra- 148 ernestIne l.rose tion would not appear to me complete, without having [a] woman raise her voice in this great and noble cause (applause); for when has any good cause been effected without her co-operation? We have been told, to-day, that it was a woman that agitated Great Britain to its very centre, before emancipation could be effected in her colonies. [For more on the role of women in abolishing slavery in Great Britain, see Clare Midgley, Women against Slavery: the British Campaigns, 1780–1830. London: Routledge, 1992.] Woman must go hand in hand with man in every great and noble cause, if success would be insured. I love to attend such anniversaries; I think the effect is very beneficial. Many such are celebrated in this country. New England celebrates the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, and well she may; for when those Pilgrim Fathers left their native shores, it was to obtain that civil and religious freedom which was denied them in the mother country; and in so far as the same freedom is desirable for all, it is perfectly right and proper that their descendants should keep the anniversaries of the landing of their ancestors. Thousands attend these anniversaries, I doubt not, with joyful hearts and grateful memories; and though I am not myself an American by birth, and have never had the pleasure of attending such an anniversary, yet my heart is always with those who do, for they hail a day of freedom. But there are other anniversaries kept in this country, one of which I presume you all love to celebrate; and that is the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That great and glorious day did not...