The Parallel Lives

At the inception of America’s Revolutionary War against King George III and Parliament, certain Pennsylvania Quakers urged a policy of abolishment of slavery within their colony.

In 1775, a Quaker named Anthony Benezet founded the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, the first abolitionist society in America.

In May 1776, delegates at the Second Continental Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia, called for the creation of thirteen new state governments, and allow colonial governments to dissolve. By 1777, all thirteen had formed their own governments, without much opposition.

On March 1, 1780, Pennsylvania’s state government passed the Gradual Abolition Act, the first extensive abolitionist act ever in the states. Slaves born after that date would receive their freedom when they turned twenty-eight.

Thomas Paine was serving then as clerk to Pennsylvania’s legislature. He too was a Quaker and slavery disgusted him. He may have assisted in writing the Act’s Preamble.

“We conceive that it is our duty, and we rejoice that it is in our Power, to extend a Portion of that freedom to others, which hath been extended to us;

“And a Release from that State of Thraldom, to which we ourselves were tyrannically doomed, and from which we have now every Prospect of being delivered.

“It is not for us to enquire, why, in the Creation of Mankind, the inhabitants of the several parts of the Earth, were distinguished by a difference in Feature. It is sufficient to know that all are the Work of an Almighty Hand.”

The remainder of the northern states followed Pennsylvania’s lead by passing legislation that was either immediate or gradual emancipation, but none of the southern states.

In 1799, the state of New York passed a gradual abolition law, and in 1817, its members set the date for final emancipation for July 4, 1827.

On July 5, 1827, New York’s former slaves, some 4600 of them, celebrated Emancipation Day, their first day of freedom, with a parade down Broadway in New York City. Like Juneteenth in Texas, the fifth day of July bears special significance in the state of New York.

On September 4, 1838, a twenty-year-old runaway slave from Maryland, who took the name Frederick Douglass, arrived in New York City, now a destination city for slaves fleeing the south.

A staunch abolitionist, Douglass moved to Rochester, New York in 1847.

Members of Rochester’s “Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society” invited Frederick Douglass to speak in the city’s Corinthian Hall on July 4, 1852. He insisted upon July 5. Some 600 people arrived.

His speech’s title, “What to the American Slave is Your Fourth of July?”

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty is an unholy license; your national greatness is swelling vanity;

“Your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants is brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality is hollow mockery.

“Your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

Throughout the speech, Douglass draws upon a rhetorical device called irony, the stark contrast between what people see on the surface and what lies underneath, hidden away.

July 4, Independence Day. July 5, Emancipation Day, both days to rejoice.