In 1852, while living in Rochester, NY, Douglass, a former slave turned editor and public abolitionist speaker, was asked to speak for a fourth of July celebration. Instead of delivering a speech glorifying and celebrating the nation's independence, he delivered a massive attack against a country that violates its own declaration of independence by allowing so many people to remain enslaved. He poses a key question as to whether or not the rights are given to all:
Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?
It is clear that they are not given to all, and Douglass sees and calls America out on the hypocrisy of these words. He notes that the founders crafted a document to afford equal protection and rights to all when they drafted the constitution, but those rights are not actually extended to all human beings. Slavery, as long as it exists, nullifies the declaration of independence as a a statement of rights extended to all.
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