Sunday, July 5, 2020

“But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to.”

From Frederick Douglass’ “5th of July Speech” in 1852. Full text: https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/2945