Celebrating whose 4th of July?
What do Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and Francis Scott Key have in common? They all owned slaves.
Patrick Henry in 1775, said reconciliation with England was futile and that for Virginians the choice was between “freedom and slavery,” and he thundered “Give me Liberty, or Give me Death!” During his lifetime, he owned varying numbers of enslaved people and when he died, he held 67 in bondage.
Jefferson owned about 600 enslaved people and yet the major author of the vaunted Declaration of Independence, wrote that “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” However, as this has been noted, it excluded women, Native Americans and enslaved people.
Francis Scott Key is known as the “author” of our national anthem the “Star Spangled Banner,” whose words end with “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Mr. Key was also a slave owner.
Others in America such as the Pennsylvania Quakers strongly opposed it as did a number of Massachusetts residents such as William Lloyd Garrison and Henry David Thoreau who called for its abolition.
For another timely and powerful perspective, citizens should read Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” It was a searing speech that spoke to the hypocrisy of America that valued “liberty” but not for the millions of enslaved Black human beings.