 I will. Okay, we have hit the bewitching hour. So I would like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting on Monday, June 19th, 2023, and we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. So Megan, you want to do that for us, please? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And I would like to point out that Camp Sir Barrett has never worn a tie to a meeting, have you? I disagree. I think that's not true. On one occasion. Okay. Well, this is the second occasion. It's a very attractive tie. Item two is instructions on exiting the building. So thank you very much for those of you who are joining us in the room. If there's an emergency in the room, please go out to the rear of the auditorium to the left or right. You can get out either way turning left or right. For those participating online, thank you for joining us. If you'd like to speak during the meeting, please either turn your camera on or send me a note in the chat and I'll have the chair call on you. Otherwise, we are not monitoring the chat for content. And for the council, I'm sorry, we don't have the monitors up tonight. You'll have to look up there for who's here, but it was going to be too much to move them around after you hear business portion. Great. So we have just a few items on the agenda and a very short time frame. So let's think accordingly as we speak as council members. We'll start with the agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in the order? Megan has one. Yes, I would like to add a resolution to the first order of business under the Juneteenth celebration. Okay. Any others? All right. Moving on to item four comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Are there any? Yes, please come up to the front. Will you make sure that the light on the mic is bright green? Okay. Please tell us who you are. You have to push the button where it says push. My name is Bo Denham. I'm a resident and a member of the H away board at South Village. Here. There's a two and a half acre parcel of land at South Village that is slated to be deeded to the city for a recreational element. This element will be paid for by a unique situation that we have with the city where all the recreation impact fees are staying on site to support the development of that element. On the current maps, it shows a youth soccer field, a 60 car parking lot and an access road that leads to the soccer field. And in talking with neighbors as we're getting close to building out South Village, there seems to be a lot as there seems to be a sense that that might not be the best element for that or the best use of that space or the best use of recreational money. So we met with a group of South Village residents met with a member of the rec committee and a representative from SDR and both agreed to that is probably not the best might not be the best choice for that area. So but they said that's not their call. It's the city council hall. So I'm here to ask if the city council would consider change that current proposal that's on the maps right now. If they are what's what's the process for that to happen and would some of the money that's been escrowed from the from the for the for this project could that be used to for consultation? Okay, I think our city manager would like to respond to get you up to date. Hi, I'm Jessie. So staff has been meeting with the developers as well and reprogramming that field. So those conversations are ongoing. We'd love to bring some of the residents into that. So the idea was that we would put together a plan and bring it to council for exactly what you're requesting. So let's be in touch and we can bring you into that conversation. So thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Are there any others? Okay, then we'll move on to five councillors announcements and reports on committee assignments and the city managers report. Yes, Andrew, do you want to start? Sure. Yeah, two things. So I attended a national resources and conservation committee meeting where spent a good deal of time going over the comp plan. They had some really good suggestions. We spent some time talking about ash trees and they were good enough to provide their written recommendation. I think it's in our in our packet. So I won't go into more detail there. I'm sure we've all read it. We also spent some time talking about Herbert Park, which maybe is a conversation also for another day. So I won't go into detail there at all. But it was a good meeting on another note. I was in DC for five days talking. I met our represents about and I met Senator Welch met with Senator Sanders staff and we talked about climate change and in particular urging Congress to put a price on carbon price on carbon as the most effective way to address climate change. There was a lot of receptivity to that and I remain hopeful. Thank you, Tim. Thank you. I attended the economic development meeting last week. I fortunately could not attend the public arts meeting on Friday because it was during the day in the morning. I am going to be attending the UVM rise summit this week on Wednesday and Thursday. And that the rise stands for research, innovation, sustainability and entrepreneurship. The former Senator Leahy will be speaking as the keynote opening speaker and Kyle Clark from beta is going to speak later. There are lots of panel discussions. There's some networking is going to happen as well. And so I look forward to that. And I also wanted to remind everybody that it looks like this Thursday is the first SB night out and the Devin McGarry band is going to be playing. So it looks like there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 weeks of great fun food and music up at the Veterans Memorial Park every Thursday night, starting at five p.m. till eight p.m. Were you going to announce that? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, but to take your, you know, so that's all I have. Okay, thank you. Megan. Nothing to report. I'll say later. Okay. Yes, Tyler. I just had some conversations with apologies. Bob Britt from the bike and pet committee and also select numbers of the energy committee regarding Hubbard. A lot of positive conversations, but we can save those for another time. Okay, great. Thank you. I attended the common area for dogs committee, the planning commission as well as the airport commission. All were good meetings. I think there's nothing big to report. The planning commission is pretty busy and focused on the comp plan. And I look forward to they were doing kind of final word smithing, I think for the chapters that they have, I guess they've gone through all of it, but they're working hard and I will, they will let us know we'll be meeting with them to hear about that plan when they submit it. And there'll be some public hearings as well. And Jessica will be here on the 17th to present teeth. Great. Thank you. So just the interest of time, the only other thing I would highlight today was that Nick Atherton joined us today as another city planner. So with that additional resource, we will be reallocating some of the staff liaisons to committees. I'm really excited to have him join the team. Thanks. Super. Okay. Well, that was the break list. Okay. Let's move on to item six. This is the consent agenda. We have eight items, the disbursements, the May financials appointing Paul Conner and Kelsey Peterson to the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission Planning Advisory Committee as representatives approve the lease agreement with the Chittenden Solid Waste District to continue the use of City Owned Land to operate the environmental depot, the pump station agreement and authorize the city manager to execute the related documents. Approve a resolution to expand the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee to 10 members by adding one new three-year seat. Approve a resolution to expand the City Charter Committee to eight members by adding one new three-year seat. Appoint candidates to all boards and committees as presented. Do you want me to read through those? We had lots of wonderful candidates for a lot of openings and managed to fill almost every one of them and in fact expanded as the consent agenda suggests with two resolutions, two committees because of interest and well interest and we like to have people be part of the committee membership for the city. And all all candidates will receive notice this week. Great. And then lastly appoint Michael Scanlon to serve as a self-growing commissioner to the Green Mountain Transit Board. In the past we've had a city counselor but Michael seemed like a good candidate to the council and he's game so we're appoint them. So I would entertain a motion on all eight items. So moved. A second? Second. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor please signify by saying aye. So moving on to item seven which is discussing the approach to ash trees and provided direction to the staff. This was a council request. Is Tom Heroes here online? Oh he's here. Oh okay. Yeah why don't you go over there please. Thank you. That's why. I'll turn it set up tonight. Right. So just a little background we've been discussing and working on this issue for a number of years and we're gonna hopefully give a direction to the administration one more time going into F-Fly 24. So just to be clear you've given us directions. Yes yes we have. I think the questions do you want to change your direction. Okay. Good evening everybody. Tom DiPietro director of Public Works joining me this evening is our city arborist Craig Lambert. So if you have a lot of technical questions about the trees Craig's here to answer those. I can give some programmatic background. I don't want to ramble on and this way the celebration is planned tonight so I'm gonna be very brief and then I'm happy to answer answer councillors questions I think would be the best approach. So I just want to note upfront for FY 24 we've got about seventy four thousand dollars set aside to address ash trees. Fifty thousand dollars of that is a capital program for ash tree replacement and interplanting. And then we also obtained a grant was twelve thousand dollar grant plus twelve thousand dollars worth of match from arbor funds for doing interplanting that funds those funds can only be used for interplanting not for any other purpose just planting trees. In this current fiscal year we had about fifty thousand dollars total for tree maintenance that includes any ash tree related work and the other fifty five hundred so street trees in the city and so we've got about five hundred eighty one ash trees left moving forward at the moment with our replacement program. Though I will note we certainly share concerns that were expressed by councillor Chalnyk and others in the natural resource conservation committee about moving too slow on this issue and finding ourselves in a situation where the emerald ash borer has come to South Burlington is really impacting our ash trees and then we have a lot of dead trees in our right away that are a liability and certainly a hazard for the public and then for our staff so hoping to kind of move forward here with our program and we can address any questions or changes as you'd like. Okay we have some recommendations before us from the natural resources and conservation committee that's a little different I guess than the direction we had given you and it's more of a hybrid plan that they're recommending and it is a process to deal over a three-year period as I understand it to inoculate is that what you call it? Treat the trees over a three-year period and then it does allow for the replacement of the trees. It's and they're also suggesting that we also keep in mind an alternative that is currently being tested I guess. Is it different kind of, is it an insecticide or pesticide? I guess so that's that's what's before us do we want to change things a little bit and recommend the hybrid plan which would actually hire staff not staff but contracts to, yes? Well they are staff they're just temporary contractual staff to do this process so what is, yes? I guess just on what I understand the recommendation to be is as close to what we talked about briefly last time which is like over a 15-year period as I write John to kind of like you know treat say 8% of the trees continue the program of replacing 20% which seems to be consistent with your schedule that you know that we're doing now and then after the three-year period like replace another 20% treat 60% and so on replace another 20, treat 40 and then like over a 15-year period say you would have replaced all the trees without being in a position where you know they all kind of die at once. Is that John is that consistent with the recommendation and Tom does that sound like a reasonable plan? Sure so again I'll say upfront we are not fundamentally opposed to a treatment program of any type we just have it brings up a couple of other questions I think council will need to wrestle with identifying which trees are to be injected and where and when making sure that we find a fair way to do that there's a number of ash trees out there that are not thriving in their current location right so we should maybe take a closer look at you know the 581 there's a lot of different variables here so putting together a program that makes sense I think takes a little bit of staff time and effort there once we land on an ejection number we could talk about perhaps doing it in the house if it was a low number certainly if it was like 480 we would have to hire that out that we couldn't manage that so number one issue is which trees and where and when and also a bigger issue perhaps is wrestling with the use of insecticides pesticides in public right of way that is what a treatment program is it's an injection of a chemical that kills the larvae of the emerald ash borer so just making sure the council is okay with us moving forward with the program of that nature because you know us or a contractor will be out there doing that work in residential areas these trees are primarily in residential neighborhoods so that's where the work could take place it's an injection versus a spraying though so in terms of you know poisoning the grass around the tree or someone's front yard that's kind of remote there's certainly can be done safely by somebody certified those they're doing they're not finding the chemical in leaves and things like that later on so certainly possible to do it safely but it is still an insecticide public right away okay well what's coming I had a question I had a question for Tom in the memo you articulated the city would need to significantly amount increase the amount currently budgeted for tree care so in my direction I guess I don't fully understand if we were to if we were to allocate our peddlers to this effort and we were to mitigate this my understanding was that we would be mitigating this all at once is that not accurate and if and if not can you explain a little bit how that would how it could lead to increasing our maintenance costs in the future yeah good question thank you for asking I maybe should have touched on that in the beginning so our annual tree maintenance budgets about ten thousand dollars an injection program of the size proposed by the NRCC is about fifty eight thousand dollars so you know much larger than our normal maintenance program for those trees so one time dollars like arbor dollars would certainly be a good start on the program these treatments are good for three years but in three years from now we would have to come up with additional funding to retreat or re-inject or you want to say it those trees and again I think the plan is I understood it would be to reduce every year replace let the interplanting trees grow larger but so it would be kind of a weird cycle that future councils would have to get behind to right and whether that's a capital project cost or when tree maintenance budget you know that's something we can talk about at budget time again for the FY 24 budget we're currently set here so that would be something else for council to discuss but in 25 those conversations are right around the corner so it could live in either place but yeah be a pretty big increase in that maintenance budget every three years okay yes isn't it a lot less expensive though than taking cutting down trees and replanting so the cost reason the average costs I think they were provided to you in the memo from NRCC some figures they got about 120 dollars a tree right right but that's every three years so overall it's probably a little more expensive but you preserve the tree canopy longer which I think is part of the goal here and we had the cost you know estimate depending on the tree type of removal and replanting about a thousand dollars a tree for trees in the right way is what we saw in our most recent contract okay I have a question yes so of the 600 trees how many are structurally impaired right now independent of being infected by the ash or do you have an idea I don't have a real number on that I do know one of the things I would propose doing is taking limiting our treat if we're gonna treat I would not want to treat any trees that are under 10 inches in diameter you would not want to I didn't hear you I wouldn't want to treat any of the trees that are under 10 inches in diameter because all these trees have been planted 30 years 25 to 30 years ago if they're not bigger than 10 inches in diameter now they're not doing very well okay okay so that is about I think I don't have an exact number it's around 160 or 70 trees maybe and do we have a feeling how many trees are already infected it has not been confirmed in South Berlin it has not been I I would be very surprised if it isn't here somewhere okay but it has not been confirmed okay so someone told us it was confirmed on an ashtray and dinopower no I looked at the ashtray at dinopower with Greg granola and I sent photos to the etymologist in the Ag Department and they determined that it was a native borer that was infecting that tree but it doesn't mean it's not here somewhere it's a really difficult insect profanity so if we if we started treating trees it would really be preventive care yeah yeah okay good I didn't know that it's good to know I maybe would interject too and probably two-thirds of the ash trees in the city are in the neighborhoods around the golf course right brand farm golf course road Nolan farm and dorset farms so that if we would enter into a treatment program that would be the area that I would probably target first right right and a number of those trees are ten inches in diameter yeah most of most of them are there's a there's a big stretch on Nolan farm where they're along the that's called the great swamp in that area that are not they're not doing well at all I would treat any of those it's not really you know they're small and there's nothing really there that's a target so we don't have to take them down right away but it wouldn't be worthwhile to treat them okay well I certainly would support focusing the treatment on the best chance of survival yeah how many how many Tom how about what percentage of our population of these of art it's less than 10% of all the trees in this in South way that's correct it's a street tree so we didn't go around and count every tree in a park or on city property it's just kind of the ones along it's not an exact figure I mean we're not talking about injections in parks or you know other locations on city property just to be clear on that as well it's really neighborhood so for others those trees that are like 10 inches in diameter or circumference right over or less that haven't done well do you think they're not doing well big because of the soil conditions or some other type of problem there are a number of reasons they're not doing well it's a lot of its soil in most of these trees are in really difficult conditions they're in really compacted soil when the developments were built all the top soil was stripped and they're pretty much planted in compacted subsoil most all of them pretty much every time I removed the tree and ground the stump or dug the stump they were never taken out of the wire basket for a lap so that tends to cause the tree roots to circle so that can be a problem down the road it starts girdling the stem of the tree so within a cut in inter interplant plan right the new the newer trees that are planted would be better taken care of and better planted yeah okay yeah everything that we've planted since has had the wire baskets removed or has been bare root planted or were those developers that planted those trees yeah subcontractors okay subcontractors but I mean some of its developers yeah yeah so I do hope that we approve this this hybrid model where we treat and I would hope that there could be a timeline for that just something that we can keep track of to know how much you can do for this amount of money through the end of the fiscal year and then clearly we have a new budget starting up for this fiscal year is that what we would start is that where we would start the treatment July 1st or do we have funds left over for this fiscal year as well the way our CIP is approved right now funds for FY 24 are for replacement or interplanting so there's nothing sort of allocated in there for treatment program I think we would want some time to go through some information as well just to really kind of clarify different trees where it might be worthwhile if that's the direction councils headed then yeah we need a little time to put a plan together in more detail yeah and if I could also ask again for our canopy that when there are trees that are identified for being taken down if we could still plant in between them just to keep the canopy in that section is that something that would be reasonable to you that's the interplanting so some locations in Craig has gone through where the Astros are and identified where we can do interplanting so before those trees are taken down or replaced we're planting new trees in between them some locations suit themselves to that others don't so where possible that was kind of being part of the original plan for replacement was to do the interplanting to help maintain the canopy as best we could in those areas well I would entertain a motion to ask the administration to look at this hybrid plan and come back with a plan so funding request and funding request yeah it would be helpful okay I heard a motion I'll second that okay any further conversation all in favor signify by saying aye aye and the motion passes so we're now to yes can you make it in under a minute okay thank you my name is Rosa and Greg I'm a South Brunton resident so some members of the nrcc and I went to an event and to a program about the emerald ash borer last week from entomologists and a forest expert and they were recommending that when you treat them you treat the healthy trees you identify the borer goes toward the stressed trees but the healthy trees will survive they they will survive as long as you treat them forever and never if you have a problem with funding I know at least on my tree the neighbors are willing to pitch in to to pay for this I bet other neighborhoods would like to do that as well to keep their trees so that's an option going forward for the council to consider for funding because I really believe the people want to keep their trees and we'll be willing to cough up you know in our case was like 60 bucks a year you know we divided it out so they also did say there are trees that have been resistant to the borer they're called lingering trees they don't know why but there are some trees if you cut them all down then of course none will be resistant so I urge you to treat as many of healthy trees as you can and keep them as long as you can which is forever as long as you treat them is that a bit of thank you very much that was you know I know I have to interrupt you so we have a yes piece of business a resolution this is a special resolution that I drew up and I think it is very appropriate we have a very special alignment of the stars I want to say this is an image a magical evening that I hope will unfold before us and I really want to give thanks to major Jackson who is a dear friend of mine he's a colleague of mine from UVM he's now at Vanderbilt the lucky guys and girls that everyone at Vanderbilt got him but he travels throughout this country and he has given to this city over two decades so that's a generation's worth he was a resident Mayfair Park so I have a resolution that I'd like to read and I like to have the council consider for approval so this is the South Burlington City Council resolution to declare major Jackson Angus our crime and honorary native son he's from Philadelphia whereas major Jackson lived in South Burlington Vermont from 2002 to 2021 and whereas major Jackson was employed at the University of Vermont as a university distinguished professor and Richard Dennis green and gold professor until 2021 and whereas major Jackson was an active South Burlington resident neighbor local poet and constituent constituent I'm sorry that's my French pronunciation and whereas major Jackson was a longtime and beloved resident of Mayfair Park a neighborhood once restricted to whites through a deed covenant active from 1940 until 1948 when all participating justices of the US Supreme Court unanimously found that the 14th amendment's equal protection clause prohibited the enforcement of such restrictive housing covenants and since 2006 struck in the South Burlington lab records and whereas major Jackson always has accepted an invitation to share his wisdom and words with an audience open to dialogue and learning including as visiting poet at the South Burlington library and Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School and whereas major Jackson was appointed by Governor Jim Douglas to the Vermont Humanities Council and whereas major Jackson was a long time and consequential member and chairman of the Vermont Humanities Council and whereas major Jackson's personal and poetic mission is to uphold and model the values of civics, civility, education, freedom and equality for all and whereas major Jackson over the course of a generation made himself integral to the fabric of our city and of our local culture to which he generously brings his voice and his sublime artistry you will be treated to a true artist tonight and several artists tonight actually and whereas major Jackson delivers without fail on a mission that fuels him and has once again graced his former hometown here today on June 19th 2023 as South Burlington commemorates its first inaugural Juneteenth celebration. Now therefore be it resolved by the South Burlington City Council that we hereby declare major Jackson an honorary native son and offer him our sincere gratitude for his contributions to our residents, region and state. So we need a motion to approve. So moved. In a second. Second. Thank you. So all in favor signify by saying aye. Thank you very much. Yeah. So we've come to the end of our business work and we're about to start what we hope is a annual and wonderful celebration of Juneteenth. Probably a month and a half ago the council. Well, Jesse noted to us, you know, your meeting in June is on June 19th. Do you that's Juneteenth. Do you want to have it on a different day? And we decided no, we wanted to have a short meeting and we have tonight so it can be done I guess and really celebrate Juneteenth educate our constituents, ourselves and share with the community. This wonderful celebration. So that's what we're doing tonight. And I'm going to we're going to end our meeting. I'm going to turn it over to Megan because she has been incredible in pulling together this program. I tried to do it and ran into some issues and health issues. So asked her to do it and she picked up the ball and ran. So if you want anything planned, I think she's got a second business going in the future. So I'm grateful for all of you to show up. I hope I know you'll enjoy the event and then I hope you'll stay for some Juneteenth refreshments afterwards. So I would entertain a motion to, oh, I'm sorry. So we're not going to adjourn your meeting. Your meeting is just going to move into the audience and invite others up. Okay. The meeting will adjourn at the end of the session. Okay. Thank you. All right. Good enough. So they're coming. Well, good evening everybody. And right now our city manager, Jesse Baker, is handing out the program and as well as an excerpt that we would prefer the audience read silently. And the reader, Ria Fitzgerald, will tell you when that moment comes. All right. Some things are best held inside in silence. And this was one of those passages. And that was Ria's choice. And I think she made a good choice. Very good. I'm just so thrilled to see a full room full. I want to ensure the student readers that there will be more of the scripts coming for those who didn't bring their scripts. And I will also be with you to help guide you. Okay. I will be right there or right there wherever you want me, I will be. All right. So once you have your program and your excerpt, you can just sit back and enjoy. I just want to introduce myself. My name is Megan Emery, and I'm the vice chair of the South Burlington City Council. And as Helen explained, I had, I think, quite, you know, I think it was almost fortunate that I had the opportunity to put this together. This was the time during my end of spring semester at UVM when I needed a positive outlet. And this would give me one. I thank you for giving me that opportunity. So any mess ups there all night, and they're going to shine like stars. That's all I can say. And I want you to know that the whole community pulled together to make this inaugural celebration profoundly meaningful and a shining success that will light our way forward to future year celebrations, which I hope will become South Burlington's annual celebration of civic pride and of our freedoms as Americans in the way that Burlington hosts the July 4th celebration and fireworks display. And I really moved by all the generosity on everyone's part, including school leaders and regarding major and Rachel, the poetry and Frederick Douglas readings, all the students here in the music. It's as though the stars aligned. It's truly been a magical three weeks. So a bit of history about South Burlington for those who weren't aware. Our city's founders chose to secede from Burlington, Vermont in 1865 at the close of the Civil War. And in 1965, city leaders chose for our high school mascot, the Confederate Colonel or the Revlon since renounced. And I am not alone in relishing the establishment of this new tradition of Juneteenth here in South Burlington so powerful for its correction of historical blindness and outright wrongs. And I want to thank Helen really leadership because she led the city through that very difficult period as did many people in this room. I want to thank Lydia Diamond who was here in this room. Helen explained that Jesse had mentioned that one of our meetings was falling on June 19th. And what did we want to do about it? Well, Lydia knew and she let me know and she left the council know that she wanted us to hold a Juneteenth celebration. And so here's to you, Lydia. I also want to thank Major Jackson. In addition to the resolution, he is my good friend and forever my colleague, though he works at Vanderbilt now he's a shining star in my personal constellation. I want to thank Rachel Alba. You are a teacher's dream because I learned as much from you as I hope that you learn from me, Rachel. And Rachel is off to reunion Island in the fall and she's gonna have a wonderful time there. I want to thank Tom Cleary, her accompanist. He is also a colleague who brings artistic passion to his teaching mission and accompaniment in which he is never second best. Please take a look at the bios of the back on the back of your programs. I want to thank Helen really. I've already thanked bring the thank her again. She is a friend and a colleague on the council. She's a leader and our longtime chair who has led our city to this historic moment. I want to thank Jesse Baker, city manager, who is an incredibly visionary municipal and statewide leader whom the council was so lucky to have except our offer of employment just two years ago. And she's amazing. I want to thank Holly Reese, Travis Ladd and Andrea Leo who tended to advertising and publicity for this event. Travis made the beautiful poster. Holly shop for all the decorations and Andrea made sure we had food and drink here for you all afterward. Regarding food. Helen made all of the lava cakes, all of the lava cakes. She makes. Yes, she she bakes and and the community benefits. That's all I can say. I want to thank Jennifer Murray, who is our South Rowlington Public Library director. Mike Mott, who is our IT specialist, Jordan, who's been here on tech assistance and Travis, our CCTV tech support. I want to thank our amazing teachers and staff at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School and the high school, especially Jillian Kenny and Gary Russell at the middle school. They are the ones who recruited our student readers and leaders here tonight and these students are shining stars in our firmament here in South Rowlington. And we are so privileged to hear Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech in your voices. Prior to tonight, I have had the pleasure to see many of them on stage at the school plays at the middle school or as members of the students organized against racism or soar. So these are truly student leaders that you have before you tonight. I want to thank Steve Locke, who answered my email. What was it, a quarter to six? As I started spritically trying to get things printed off for for tonight. Just the last little bits. I want to thank my husband. He has supported me as I've organized this, including on Father's Day. He's been very patient and understanding spouse to me for many years. And I want to thank my parents, who also took care of those final little details as I was here at City Hall preparing. So I just want to thank you all heartfelt thanks to you all. So if you will turn to the program, you are going to be treated to a really special event. This is where I get to sit back and relax like you all. I might be a little bit more active when we get to the Frederick Douglass meeting, but it's all creative process and Frederick Douglass would be looking down and smiling on you tonight. So we'll make it all work. Thanks very much. So Major Jackson was kind enough to record this for us. We're trying to do this through Go To Meeting so our friends who are joining remotely can also hear. It may be a little choppy and for that we apologize, but we're going to splice it into the town meeting TV video of this production later on so you can have a potentially smoother watch of it. Here we go. President of Rochester, Vermont and Nashville, Tennessee. I'm so delighted to be a part of the celebration of the day in which the last official enslaved Africans and their descendants learned of their freedom out of human bondage. I'm recording from the Kave Khanum retreat at the Greensburg campus of University of Pittsburgh where I am serving as Falka T. Kave Khanum retreat is a week long writers conference for African American poets that began 27 years ago. It is quite easy for me to connect Juneteenth to my life and work as a writer and educator as well as the work, the poems of all the poets here at Kave Khanum. It is important to remember that a principle of slavery was that literacy was banned, was illegal, reading and writing was punishable by death. There is nothing critical or theoretical about that. It was and is simply a fact of not one race, but the history of our country. To provide enslaved Africans and their descendants with the tools of thinking and expression was a fundamental danger to the institution of human bondage. I never forget this when I sit down to write poetry, nor does the poets here at Kave Khanum. We understand the relationship between our freedom today and the practice of poetry. I appreciate the fact that we celebrate Juneteenth as a national holiday, one that underscores the values that serve as the bedrock of our country, of our democracy. Yes, the holiday allows us to mark the day Major General Granger march union troops into Galveston Bay to publicly announce the Emancipation Proclamation. But it also allows us to remember all those individuals who kept the flame alive, who made our country accountable to principles of equality and freedom. In that regard, America was fortunate to have such an eloquent and fierce proponent in the figure of Frederick Douglass. As an internationally renowned orator and abolitionist, someone who understood intimately the soul crushing fact of bondage, we celebrate Frederick Douglass this Juneteenth. His narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave born, published 1845, details the psychological and physical horrors of slavery. It is movingly written. It is a sacred document that should continue to be taught in American schools, not because it is an instrument of national guilt, but because it is a narrative of love and belief in our country. It will have you weep, but it will also have you stand in a new light and understanding of what freedom truly means and that it should not be undermined by careerist politicians. Douglass was and has long been an inspiring subject for poets during his lifetime and up to the present day. I wish to read to you two poems that are directly about Douglass and a poem by me that is in the spirit of Douglass' sense of justice and resistance, which this day Juneteenth also has us recommit. The first poem is by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Born 1872, died 1906. It is an elegy, a poem for the occasion, one that limits the passing. It is for a deceased person. Dunbar would have been 22 years old when Frederick Douglass died. Frederick Douglass by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. A hush is over all the teeming lists. And there is pause, a breath space in the strife. A spirit brave has passed beyond the mists and vapors that obscure the son of life. An Ethiopia with bosom torn laments the passing of her noblest born. She weeps for him a mother's burning tears. She loved him with a mother's deepest love. He was her champion through direful years and held her wheel all other ends above. When bondage held her bleeding in the dust, he raised her up and whispered hope and trust. For her, his voice, a fearless clarion rung that broke in warning on the ears of men. For her, the strong bow of his power, he strung and sent his arrows to the very den where grim oppression held his bloody place and gloated over the miseries of a race. And he was no soft-tongued apologist. He spoke straightforward, fearlessly uncowd. The sunlight of his truth dispelled the mist and set in bold relief each dark, huge cloud. To send in crime, he gave their proper hue and hurled at evil what was evil's do. Through good and ill report, he cleaved his way right onward with his face set towards the heights, nor feared to face the foeman's dread array. The lash of scorn, the sting of petty spights. He dared the lightning in the lightning's track and answered thunder with his thunder back. When men maligned him and their torrent wrath and furious implications over him broke, he kept his counsel as he kept his path. But for his race, not for himself, he spoke. He knew the import of his master's call and felt himself too mighty to be small. No miser and the good he held was he. His kindness followed his horizons rim, his heart, his talents and his hands were free to all who truly needed ought of him. Where poverty and ignorance were rife, he gave his bounty as he gave his life. The place and calls that first aroused his might still proved its power until his latest day and freedoms less and for the aid of right still in the foremost rank he waged the fray. Wrong lived. His occupation was not gone. He died in action with his armor on. We weep for him. But we have touched his hand and felt the magic of his presence nigh. The current that he sent throughout the land, the kindling spirit of his battle cry over all that holds us. We shall triumph yet and place our banner where his hopes were set. Oh, Douglas, thou has passed beyond the shore. But still thy voice is ringing over the gale. Thou's taught thy race how high her hopes may soar and bade her seek the heights nor faint nor fell. She will not fail. She she heeds thy staring cry. She knows thy guardian spirit will be nigh. And rising from beneath the chastening rod, she stretches out her bleeding hands to God. Frederick Douglas by the poet Robert Hayden. When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth. When it belongs at last to all, when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, reflex action, when it is finally one, when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians, this man, this Douglas, this former slave, this Negro, beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted alien. This man superb and love and logic, this man shall be remembered. Oh, not with statutes rhetoric, not with legends and poems and reefs of bronze alone. But with the lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream. Of the beautiful, needful thing. Stand your ground. America. How often I have applauded your flagpoles, we as citizens struggle to find common ground. Yet do much to damage the planks of your arc, not a soft tune we make glissando of the harmonized. We have a want problem, more of ourselves problem, us versus them in the great race to prosperity. In his introduction to metaphysics, Heidegger asked, why are there beings at all? We have as guides, clansmen and eugenicists who claim all others as less. It is, I admit, the slapping of your ropes tolling a perfect union. But is the measure of your worth a silent clang elsewhere? How is it a ripple also runs through me? When your wind rises, your cloth is nation, hauled down or half mass, like a deferred dream, only earthly because we strive on a path hidden by dead leaves, a natural entity whose death makes valid its rebirth, that an angry man can shoot a teenager is par, as we say. We, Iotus, Deltas, Crips, Knights, new tribesmen and new codes should in earnest put away our swords and talk shows. Think our watermelons have so many seeds. And we galaxies in us dissolve our superpowers, our supernovas, the mysteries we have, an unmitigated burning of sound and fury, not organism of one. But organs, America, I've had enough. Thank you for listening. Happy Juneteenth, 2023. Yes, I direct all of the students to come up. And I am just gonna read your names. I know that there are a couple of people who are absent. So I have some more copies here if you can recognize and identify Megan and Abby. And I'll just say a few words about this. It was a speech and back in the 19th century, people had longer spans of attention. 13 and a half single speech pages. I just want to give you a warning. And I also want to say that that is why I asked Rachel to break it up a little bit with some music. So she's going to be doing some musical interludes between the six chapters. All right. And this is improvisation. So you're gonna again be treated to Rachel's artistry along with Tom Cleary. And Frederick Douglass, as major Jackson said, and I just want to know somebody sitting in a seat with major Jackson's name on it. He has a star in the library. He's a donor to this building that we are sitting in tonight. He raised that a little bit of his biography Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave. You can see his birthdate. You don't quite know when he was born because it was probably baby boy born on some plantation. And he escaped and became a famous order and American. And he gave to this nation through his sacrifice, like all great Americans do, hopefully not all of us who are blood, but definitely through through our sweat and tears. And those who give through their blood, that is the ultimate sacrifice, of course. So he was invited, I mean, I have this written up, you can just take a peek at the background. He was invited to speak on July 4. And he said I will come to this anti slavery meeting, but I will speak on July 5. Because I and my people cannot celebrate independence like you can. So that is the context in which he gave the speech in Rochester, New York. So we are going to start with Bryce. Are you all singing in order to make it easy? So Bryce and Megan and is it Alana and Abby and Molly. And I want you all to know that they have brought their own voice into their reading. So they will bring your attention to parts that they find to be particularly important. So take your time and breathe. You heard major Jackson. You also heard Rachel sing. Breathing and taking pauses is a part of us just taking in the words and the art. Mr. President, friends and fellow citizens. He who could address this audience without a quelling sensation has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly, more shrinkling, nor a greater distrust of my ability than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of the sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would very much mistrust me. This little experience I have in addressing the public meetings in country school houses avails me nothing on the present occasion. The papers and play cards say that I am to deliver a fourth of July orientation. This certainly sounds large and out of the common way for me. It is trust that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful hall and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces nor the perfect gauge I think I have on Corinthian Hall seems to free me from my embarrassment. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation from which I escaped is considerable. The difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former are no means light. That I am here today is, to me, a matter of astonishment, as well as gratitude. You will not therefore be surprised if in what I have to say, evidence, no elaboration preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding extortion. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together. And trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the fourth of July. It is the birthday of your national independence and your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the clay and to the act of your great divergence and to the signs and the wonders associated with that act that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year in your national life. It reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad fellow citizens that your nation is so young. 76 years, though a good old age for a man, is a mere speck in the life of a nationality. Three score years and then 10 is the allotted time for an individual man. But nations number their years by the thousands. According to this fact, you are even now in the beginning of your national career. Still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There's in hope in the thought and hope is much needed. Under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon, the eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portrayed distraustous times. But his heart may well be beaten lighter at the thought that America is so young. And that she is still in the impressive stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice, and of truth, yet give direction to her destiny. Where the order, nation order, the old patriot's heart may be sadder. Or the reformers brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom. And the hope of its profits go down in sorrow. There's consolation in the thought that America is so young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the chorus of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and steady majesty and induate the land. Refreshering and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in the wrath and fury and bear away on their angry waves at the accumulated wealth and years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel and flow on very searingly as ever. But while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up and leave nothing behind but the withered branch and the unsightly rock to howl in the abyss sweeping wind. The sad tale of the plartid Gordy. As with rivers, so with nations. Fellow citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at the length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is that 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your sovereign people in which now you glory was not then born. You were under the British crown. Your fathers esteemed the British government as the home government in England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home did in the exercise of its parental prerogatives imposed upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations as in its major judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper. But your fathers, who had not yet adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the inflamidity government and the absolute character of its act, presumed to differ from the home government in the respect to the wisdom and 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. I scarcely say, fellow citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers, such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worthy much to anybody. It would certainly prove nothing as to what I might, as to what part I might have taken. As I have lived the great controversy of 1776 to say now that America was right and England wrong is exceedingly easy. Everyone can say it. The Dastard, not less than the noble brave can. But there was a time when to pronounce against England and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did were accounted in their day. Plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men to side with the right against the wrong with the weak against strong and with the oppressed against the oppressor. Here lies the merit and the one which of all others seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But to proceed. The feelings themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty and men of spirit earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remandestrated. They did so in a disastrous, respectful, loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and soren. Yet they preserved. They were not the men to look back. As the sheet anchor takes firmer hold when the ship is tossed by the storm. So did the cause of your father's gross stronger as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best British state men admitted to its justice and the loftest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But with that blindness, which it seems to be unvarying characteristics of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his host were drowned in the Red Sea, the British government persisted in the exactions complaint of. The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now. Even by England, but we feared the lesson is woefully lost on our present rulers. Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men. And if they did not go mad, they became resensitive under this treatment. They felt themselves victims of gracious wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men, there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of total separation of the colonies from the crown was born. It was a startling idea, much more so than we at the distance of time regarded. The timid and prudent has been intimidated of that day, where, of course, shocked and alarmed by it. Such people lived then, had a lived then, and will probably ever have a place on this planet. And their course in respect to any great change, no matter how great the good to be attained or the wrong to be redressed by it, may be calculated with such precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change. Of this sort of change, they are always, they are always strongly in favor. These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers, and the Appalachian probably conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, throughout a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers applied to some of our own politicians. Their opposition to then, the dangerous thought was earnest and powerful, but amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it. The alarming and revolutionary idea moved on and the country with it. On the second of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress to the dismay of lovers of ease and the worshipers of property clothe the dreadful idea with all the authority of nation sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution. And as we seldom hit upon resolutions drawn up in our day, whose transparency is all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. Resolved that these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown and that all political connection between them and the states of Great Britain is in ought to be dissolved. Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded. And today you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours and you therefore may properly celebrate this anniversary. The fourth of July is the first great fact in your nation's history. The very ring bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and hold it perpetual resemblance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny. So indeed I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles. Be true to them on all occasions in all places against all foes and at whatever cost. From the top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows like mountains in the distance disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks that bolt drawn that chain broken and is all lost. Clean to this day, clean to it and to its principles. With the grasp of storm tossed mariner to a spark at midnight. The coining into becoming of a nation and any circumstances and is an interesting event. But besides general considerations there were peculiar circumstances which made the event of this Republic an event of special attractiveness. The whole scene as I look back to it was a simple dignified and sublime. The country of the of the population at the war stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the mutations of war. The population was weak and scattered and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There are no means of concert in combination such as exists now. Neither steam nor lightning had been reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac to Delaware was a journey of many days under these and innumerable other disadvantages your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed. Fellow citizens I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the declaration of independence were brave men. They were great men too great enough to give fame to a great age does not often happen to a nation to raise at one time such a number of truly great men. The point for which I am compelled to view them is not certainly the most favorable. And yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen patriots and heroes and for the good they did and the principles they contended for I will unite with you to honor their memory. They loved their country better than their own private interests and though this is not the highest form of human excellence all will concede that it is a rare virtue and that when it is exhibited it ought to command respect. He who will intelligently lay down his life for his country is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your father's staked their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty they lost sight of all other interests. They were peacemen but they referred they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men but they did not shrink from agitated against oppression. They showed forbearance but that they knew its limits. They believed in order but not in the order of tyranny. With them nothing was settled that was not right. With them justice liberty and humanity were final not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. How circumspect exact and proportionate were all their movements. How unlike the politicians of an hour. Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment and stretched away and strength into the distant future. They seized upon it eternal principles and set a glorious example in their defense mark them. Fully appreciating the hardships to be encountered firmly believing in the right of their cause honorably inviting the scrutiny of an onlooking world reverently appealing to heaven to test their sincerity soundly comprehending the soul and responsibility that they are about to assume wisely measuring the terrible odds against them. Your fathers the fathers of this republic did most deliberately under the inspiration of glorious patriotism and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom lay deep the cornerstone of the national superstructure which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you. Of this fundamental work this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are meant with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm banners and penance wave extolingly on the breeze the din of business to is hushed. Even my mom seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear piercing fife and stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peel of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made hymns are sung and sermons are preached in honor of this day while the quick martial tramp of a great and multi to new nation echoed back by all the hills valleys and mountains of a vast continent bespeak the occasion of one thrilling and universal interest a nation's Jubilee. Friends and citizens I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel perhaps a much deeper interest than your speaker. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools narrated at your firesides unfolded from your pulpits and thundered from your legislative halls and are as familiar to you as household words. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence. I remember also that as people Americans are remarkably familiar with all the facts which make it in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a national trait perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans and can be had cheap will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans. And if I say the Americans can side of any question maybe safely left in American hands. I leave therefore the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine. My business if I have any here today is with the present the accepted time with God and his cause is the ever living now. Trust no future however pleasant that the dead past bury its dead act act in the living present heart within and God overheard. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future to all inspiring motives to noble deeds which can be gained from the past we are welcome but now is the time the important time your fathers have lived died and have done their work and I and have done much of it well. You live and must die and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of your fathers unless your children are to be blessed by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard earned fame of your fathers to cover your endolence. Sidney Smith tells us that men seldom utilize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers to excuse some fully or with wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote. Ancient and modern. It was fashionable hundreds of years ago for the children of Jacob to boast we have Abraham to our fault. When they had lost Abraham's faith and spirit that people can tell themselves under the shadow of Abraham's great name while they reputed the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over the country today. Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepultures of the righteous. Washington could not die until he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood and the traders in the bodies of souls of men. Shout we have Washington to our father alas that it should be so yet so it is. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is often interred with their bones. Fellow citizens pardon me. Allow me to ask why am I called upon to speak here today. What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that declaration declaration of independence extended to us. And am I therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us. Would to God both for your sake and ours that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful for those who is there so gratitude that would not for those who is so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits who so solid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs. I am not that man in a case like that the dumb might eloquently speak and the lame man leap as a heart. But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I'm not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you not me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you. Has brought stripes and death to me. This fourth July is yours. Not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems were inhumane mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes towering up in heaven were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty burying the nation in irrecoverable ruin. I can today take up in the plaintive lament of appealed and woe smitten people. By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down. Yeah, we wept when we remembered Xan. We hanged our harps upon the willows of the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive, required of us a song. And they had wasted us required of us Murph, saying, sing us one of those songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? And if I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, let my hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. Fellow citizens, above your national tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains heavy and grievous yesterday are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason, most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bond man, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looks blacker to me than on this fourth of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce. With all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will use the severest language I can command and yet not one word shall escape me that any man whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice or who is not at heart a slaveholder shall not convince, confess to be right and just. But fancy I hear some one of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists failed to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less? Would you persuade more and rebuke less? Your cause would be much more likely to succeed but I submit where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish just obedience on the part of the slave. There are 72 crimes in the state of Virginia which if committed by a black man no matter how ignorant he be, subject him to punishment of death. While only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding under severe fines and penalties the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your street, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea and the reptiles that crawl shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of a black man. Is it not astonishing that while we are plowing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold, that while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers, that while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave. We are called upon to prove that we are men. Would you have me, would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You are, you have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter be set with great difficulty involving a doubtfulness, doubtful application of the principle of justice? Hard to be understood. How should I look today in the presence of Americans dividing and subdividing a discourse to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively and negatively? I'm affirmatively to do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man behind the, there is not a man behind the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong. Excuse me. Please read the following passage provided with your program. I'll give you a couple of seconds so you can read it by yourself and I'll read it quietly after. I'm going to read it quietly now. What am I to argue that it is wrong to, to make men brute, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant, ignorant of their relationship with their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lashes, to load their limbs with iron, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auctions, to thundered their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them to obedience and submission to their masters. Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No, I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. What then, what then remains to be argued? Is it, is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken, that there is blasphemy, blasphemy in the thought that it is inhuman, cannot be divine? Who can reason, who can reason on such a proposition that they can, that they can, may? I, I cannot. The time for such argument is passed, a time, at a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument is needed. Oh, had I the ability and couldn't I reach the nation ear? I would today pour out a fiery steam of bidding ridicule, blasting, reproach, livering sarcasm in stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire. It is not a gentle shower of, it's not a gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake and the earthquake. The feeling of nation must be mistaken, must be, the feeling of the nation must be quickened. The cons, the conscience of the nation must be aroused. The pri, the priority of the nation must be startled, startled. The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and it's, and it's crime against God and, and man must be proclaimed and denounced. What, what to American slave is, is your fourth to, fourth of July? I answer a day that reveals him more than all the other days of, in the year. The gross injustice, the cruelty to which he is, to which he is the constant victim, to him, your celebration is a sham, your boaster liberty and unholy license, your nation's greatest greatness, swelling, vanity, your sounds of rejoicing, rejoicing are empty and your heart less, your den, your denounce the tations of treant, brass-fronted impudence, your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery, mockery, your pri, your prayers and humps, your ceremonies and thanksgiving, with your, with your religious parades and sol, solmity are to, are to him near blast, near blast, bon blast, fraud, discreet, death, freestion and enmity and hypocrisy, hypocrisy to him, like, one minute, a thin veil to cover up crimes which would degrade, disgrace a nation's of savage, of savages. There is not a nation on earth guilty of practice, more shocking and bloody than the people of these, of these United States. At, at this very hour, go, go where you may, search where you roam through all the monarchies and desposities of the old world, travel through South America, search out every, every abused. And when you have found, when you have found the last, lay your fats by the side of the everyday practice of this nation. And you will, and you will say with me that for revolting bar, bar, vanity and shameless hypocrisy, American resigns without a rabble. The internal slave trade. Take the American slave trade, which we are told by the papers, and especially pro, pro Prius. Just now, Ex-Center Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the facts to show that slavery is, is in no danger. This trade is one of the pre, pretty of American institution. It is carried on, on in all the large towns and cities in one half of this confederacy and millions are mocked every year by dealers in this horde traffic. In several states, this trade is a chef's source of wealth. It is called the international trade to slave. International slave trade. It is probably called so to in order to divert from the, from its, the horror with which the foreign slave trade is seen. That trade has long since been denounced by this government as a priority. It, it, it has been denounced with burning words from the higher places of the nation. A traffic to arrest it, to put an end to it. And this nation keeps a army at its immense cost. On the coast of Africa, every everywhere, this and this inhumane traffic exposed alike to law of God and, and of men, the duty to expropriate and destroy it. It is even by our doctors of, of the at divinity in order to put an end to it. Some of the, some of these last have consented that their colors, but for them should leave this country and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa. It is, however, a notable fact that while so much extracur, extracur, extracuration is poured out by Americans, upon those engaged in the foreign slave trade, the men engaged in its, the men engage in the, in their businesses is deemed honorable. Behold the practice operation of this international slave trade, the American, the American slave trade sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swines for, for the market. You know, you know what swine, a swine dover, you know what is a swine dover. I, I will show you a man dover. They inhabit all southern states. They, they go there. The country and crowded their highways of nations with, though, with doves of humans stopped. You will see one of these humans flesh goblers armed with pistols, whips, bowie knives, divers, divers a company of a hundred men, women and children. From the pop, pop Mac, from the pop to Mac to slave markets at new, new Orleans. These wretched people are also to be sold singly or in lots to suit purchase, purchase purchasers. They are food for the cotton fields and deadly search and dead in the deadly sugar meals. Marked this, marked the sad procession at its, at its move where really along an inhuman wretch who dives them. Here his savage yells and his blood chilling oafs as he hurries on his upright, upright captives. These there see the old man, old man with locks and in gray cast one glance if you please upon that upon that young mothers whose shoulders are bare to scorching sun, their briny, their briny tears falling on the brown brows of, of the baby in her arms. See to that girl of 13 weeping. Yes, weeping as she thinks of the mother from whom she was, she has been torn. The, the drove moves totally heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength. Suddenly you hear a quick whip snap. You hear a quick snap, like a discard of a rifle, a flutter clank of the chains rattles. Your ears are salted, salted with a screen that that has that scene you have been torn, torn it away, torn it away to the center of your soul. The crack you heard was the sound of the slave whip. The scream you heard was from the woman you saw with the bay. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains that flash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow this drop drove to New Orleans, attended the auction. See men examined like horses. See forms. See the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking lays of Americans slave buyers. See this, see this drove sold and separated from for every and never forget the deep sad sobs that arouse from the scattered multitude. Tell me citizens where under the sun can you witness a speckle, more friend fieldish and shocking yet this is the yet this is glaze. Yet this is but a glaze at American slave trade as it existed at this moment. A ruling part of the United States. I was born amid such sites and scenes. To American slave trade is terribly terribly reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Bill Pot Street Bell's Point, Baltimore and had watched from the warves. The slave ships in vast mean. Arched. And arched from the shores there. Cargo of human flesh waiting for a favorable win to wrap them down Chesapeake. Chesapeake. There was at a time a grand slave market at the head of Platte Street by Austin Lord Folk. His his eight his agents were set into into every town and countries in Maryland announcing their arrival through papers and slamming handbills. Headed headed cash for blacks. These men's were generally well dressed men and very capitating on their manners. Every ever ready to drink to treat and to gamble the fate of many a slave a slave has depended on upon the turn of a single card. And in a and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bar bargains arranged in states of brutal drunkenness. The flesh mongers gather up their victims by dozens and drive them chained to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here a ship is chartered for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship they are usually driven in the darkness of night for since the anti-slavery agitation a certain caution is observed. In the deep still darkness of midnight I have often been aroused by the dead heavy footsteps and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our doors. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense and I was often consoled when speaking to my mistress in the morning to hear her say that the custom was very wicked that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains and the heartrending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me and my horror. Fellow citizens this murderous traffic is today an act of operation in this boasted republic and the solitude of my spirit. I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the south. I see the bleeding footsteps. I hear the doleful will of fettered humanity on the way to the slave markets where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep and swine knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight. Is this the land your fathers loved, the freedom which they toil to win? Is this the earth where on they move? Are these the graves they somber in but still a more inhuman, disgraceful and scandalous state of things remains to be presented? By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon's line has obliterated. New York has become as Virginia and the power to hold, hunt and sell men, women and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is coexistent with the Starspangled Banner and American Christianity, where these go may also go the merciless slave hunter, where these are man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sports man's gun, but by the most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty in person of every man are put in peril. Your broad Republican domain is hunting ground for men, not for thieves and robbers enemies of society merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your president, your secretary of state, your lords, nobles and ecclesiastics enforce as a duty to your free and glorious country and to your God that you do this accursed thing, not fewer than 40 Americans have within the past two years been hunted down and without a moments warning hurried away and chains and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children dependent on them for bread, but of this no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage and to all rights in this Republic, the rights of God included. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, nor religion. The fugitive slave law makes mercy to them a crime and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery and five when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient under this hell black enactment to send the most pious and exemplary man, black man, to the remorseless jaws of slavery. His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side and that side is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world that in tyrant killing, king hating, people loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribes and are bound in deciding the case of a man's liberty to hear only his accusers. In glaring violation of justice and shameless disregard of the forms of administering law and cunning arrangement to entrap the dispenseless and in diabolical intent this fugitive slave law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe having the brass baseness to put such a law on the statute. If any man in this assembly thinks differently differently from me in this matter and feels able to disprove my statements, I would gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select. Take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christianity and liberty. And if the churches and the ministers of our country were not stupidly blind or most wickedly indifferent, they too would so regard it. At the very right moment that they are thanking God for their enjoyment of civil and religious liberty and for the right of to worship God according to the disdicitates of their own consensus. They are utterly silent to respect a law which robs religion of its chief significance and makes it utterly worthless to have a world lying wickedness. Did this law concern the mint, anise and coming? A bridge the right to sing palms and partake of the sacrament or to engage in any of these ceremonies of religion? It would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pupils. A general shout would go up from the church demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal and it would go hard with the politician who presumed to socialize the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on this banner. Further, if this demand were not compelled with another Scotland, it would be added to the history of religious liberty and the stone old conveneers would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door and heard from in every puppet and film work would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox to the beautiful but treacherous Queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that Church of our country with fractional exceptions does not exceed the fugitive slave law as a declaration of war against religious liberty implies that the church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony and not a vital principle requiring active believelence, justice, love and goodwill towards man. It seems sacrifice above mercy, palms singing above right doing, solemn meetings and practical righteousness, a worship that can be conjured by a person who refuses to give shelter to the homeless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy. It is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such person as scribes, fairies, hypocrites, who pay the tale of myth, anise and coming and who have omniated the waiter matters of law, judgment, face and mercy. The church responsible, but the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave. It actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bullwalk of American slavery and the shield of American slave hunters. Many of its eloquent divides who stand as the very lights of the church have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may properly be a slave, that the relation of master and slave is ordinated of God, that to send back an escaped bondment to his master is clearly the duty of all followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this horrible blasphemy is palmed off of the world for Christianity. For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity, welcome atheism, welcome anything. In preference to the gospel, as preached by those divines, they convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbacose cruelty and serve to confer more infidels in this age than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, full chair and boiling broke put together have done. These ministers make religion a cold and fenty hearted thing, having either principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They stripped the love of God of its beauty and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man, Steelers and thugs. It is not that pure and unfaithful religion, which is from above, which is first pure and peaceful, then easily than easy to be entreated, full of mercy and poor, full of mercy and good fruits without partiality, without hypocrisy. But religion, which favors the rich against the poor, which exalts the proud above the humble, which divides mankind into two classes. Tyrants and slaves, which says to the man and chains, stay there. And to the oppressor, oppress on. It is a religion, which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind. It makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of their race and tramples in the dust of great truth of our brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church and the popular worship of our land and nation, our religion, a church and a worship, which on the authority of the inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the side of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might as well be addressed. Bring no more vain ablations. Incense is an abomination unto me. The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies. I cannot away with this in twiggy. Even the solemn meeting, your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hatest. They are a trouble to me. I am weary to bear them. And when he spread forth your hands, I will hide my own eyes from you. Yeah, when I ye make many prayers, I will not hear your hands are full of blood. Seize to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, plead for the widow. The American church is guilty when viewed in connection with what it's doing to uphold slavery. But it's superlivity guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The sin of which is guilty is one of admission, as well as commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive his truth. When he declared that there is no power out of all the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained by it. Let the religion press the puplet, the Sunday School, the conference meeting, the great, a listaceal missionary, the Bible and track obsessions of the land array their immense powers against slavery. And the slaveholding, the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered into the winds. That they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive. In prosecuting the anti slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry. But how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave by the church and ministry of the country in battle arrayed against us. And we are compelled to flight or flee. From what quarter, I beg to know, has preceded a fire so deadly upon our ranks. During the last two years, as the Norman puplet, as the champions of oppressors, the chosen men's of American theology has have appeared, men, honored for their so called piety and their real learning. The lords of Buffalo, the springs of New York, the lathrops of Auburn, the coxses of the coxses and spencers of Brooklyn, the gannets and sharps of Boston, the deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have an utter denial of authority of him by whom they persist to be called the ministry deliberately taught us against the example of Hebrews and against the remonstrous of the apostles that we ought to obey man's law before the law of God. My spirit wearies of such blasphemy. And how could such men be supported as the standing types of representatives of Jesus Christ? It is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions. I thank God that there were noble men may be found scattered all over the northern states of whom Henry Ward Bleacher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. May, a sacrosse, and my esteemed friend on the platform are shining in examples. And let me say further that among these men lies the duties of our ranks with the religion, faith, and zeal and to cheer us on the great mission of the slave's redemption from his chains. Religion in England and religion in America. One is struck with the difference between the altitude of the American church toward the anti-slavery movement and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. There, the church cheered to its mission of emeralding, elevating and improving the condition of mankind. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. It was demanded in the name of humanity and according to the new law of the living God, the sharps, the Clarksons, and the Wilber forces, the buttocks, the birch lids, and the nibs were all alike famous for their piety and their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement. And the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement. When the church of this country shall assume a favorable instead of a hostile position towards that movement. Americans, your Republican politics, not less than your Republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation as embodied in the two great political parties is solemnly pledged to the support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowded tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on the Democratic institutions. While you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina, you invite your shores, fugitives, of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water. But the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education, yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation. A system begun in avarice, supported in pride and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary and made the sad stories of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen, and orators. Till your gallant sons are ready to fly arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors. But in regard to the 10,000 wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse. You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland, but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor, yet you sustain a system which, in its very essence, cast a stigma upon labor. You can bear your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a three-penny tax on tea and yet ring the last hard-earning farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe that of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth and has commended all men everywhere to love one another. Yet, you notoriously hate and glory in your hatred, all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare before the world and are understood by the world to declare that you hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And yet, you hold securely in a bondage which according to your own Thomas Jefferson is worse than the ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to a post, a seventh part of the inhabitants in your country. Fellow citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power, abort it, corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion. It makes your name a hissing and a byword to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your union. It fetters your progress. It is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education. It fosters pride. It breeds insolence. It promotes vice. It shelters crime. It is a curse to the earth that supports it. And yet, you cling to it as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh, be warned, be warned. A horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation's bosom. The venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic. For the love of God, tear away and fling from you the hideous monster and let the weight of 20 millions crush and destroy it forever. Constitution. It is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States. That the right to hold and to hunt slaves is part of that Constitution, framed by the illustrious fathers of this republic. Then I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped, to paltre with us in a double sense and keep the word of promise to the ear, but break it to the heart. And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the various imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is an inevitable conclusion and from it there is no escape. But I differ from those who charge their baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is slander upon their memory, at least so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length, nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, by William Goodall, by Samuel E. Sewall, and last, though not least, by Garrett Smith. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour. Fellow citizens, there is no matter in respect to which the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so rudely imposed upon that, opposed on pawn, as that of the pro-slavery characters of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold, there is neither warrant, license, or sanitary of the hateful things, but interprepted. As though to be interprepted, the Constitution is glorious liberty document. Read its pream, consider it proposed. And slavery upon them. Is it at the gateway? Or is it in the temple? It is neither. Well, I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion. Let me ask, if it not, what's somewhat singular that if the Constitution were intended to be by its farmers and adopters, a slaveholder instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slaves can anywhere be found in it? What would be thought of an instrument drawn up, legally drawn up for the propose of a titling, the city of brochure to a track of land in which no mention of land was made? Now there are certain rules of interpretation for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, common sense rules, such as you and I, all of us can understand and apply without having passed years in study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution and to pro-pro-procate the opinion and to use all honorable means to make his option in prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of America citizens would be as insured as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vince presidents, Dallas, tells us that the constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive and no American heart can, no American heart to devote. He farther says the constitution in its words is plain and intelligible. And it is meant for the home bread, unsulfated, understanding of our fellow citizens. Center Farn tells us that the constitution is the fundamental law that which controls all other. The charter of our liberty, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding through it. Rewoundly, the testimony of Senator Breese, Linus Cass and many others that might be named. Who are anywhere a stinging establishment? As sound lawyers so regard the constitution, I take it therefore that it is not pre-sumptuous and in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument. Now take the constitution according to its plain reading and identify the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause. And it on the other hand, it will be found to contain principle in purposes entirely hostile to the existing of savory. I have detained my audience entirely too long already at some future period. I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion. Allow me to say in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day present of the state of the nation, I do not despair this of this country. There are forces in operation which must inviolability work the downfall of savory. The arms of the Lord is not shortened and the dome of savory is certain. I therefore leave off where I began with hope. While drawing encouragement from the decoration of independence with great principles it contains in the genius of American institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot around in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time when such could be done, long established customs of hurtful character could formally fence themselves in and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few and the multitude walked on mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Wall cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of a strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea as well as on the earth. Wind, steam and lightning are its target agents. Oceans no longer divide but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distantly heard on the other. The far off and fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The celestial empire, the mystery of ages is being solved. The Theatres of Almighty, let there be light, has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage, weather and taste, sport or reverence can now hide itself from the awe-pervading light. The iron shoe and the crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise up and put on her yet unwoven garment. Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God. In the frequent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it. Godspeed, the year of Jubilee, the wide world, O dear, when from the galing change set free, the oppressed shall vilely bend by the knee and wear the yoke of triumph. Like brutes no more, that year will come and freedoms regain. To main his plundered rights again, restore. Godspeed, the day when human blood shall cease to flow. In every climb be understood the claims of human brotherhood. And each return for evil, not blow for blow. That day will come, off yields to end, and change into a faithful friend, each foe. Godspeed, the glorious hour when none on earth shall exercise a lordly power, nor in a tyrant's presence cower, but to all manhood's stature tower by equal birth. That hour will come to each to all, and from his prison house the thrall go forth. Until that year, day, hour arrive, with head and heart and hand all strive, to break the rod and rend the guide to the spoiler of his prey deprive. So witness heaven, and never from my chosen post, whatever the peril or the cost be driven. Rachel and Tom, please stay on. We all heard Major Jackson say there is an important book that every school child should read. That is the narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass. For the student heading off into the wide world, I thought she should know a little bit more about the women's suffrage movement. And so I give my student a book, some reading to take with her, as well as some flowers to both her and to Tom. All right, now I invite you all. This is the moment for the open mic where you can come up to the podium, or I can come to you with the microphone. If you'd like to say something tonight, we always have public comments at our council meetings. And so this is your chance simply to say thank you, simply to say happy Juneteenth, simply to say how wonderful the future generation will be and that I will say myself. Hi, good evening. I would definitely like to say thank you for this wonderful event, and thank you to the future. I mean, I was truly amazed at your dedication, your diction, your focus, and just really standing up there and going through all those pages and doing it with so well and so eloquent. So thank you. And to the music performers, thank you very much. I am just really, I wanna say this, but I'm truly blessed to be in your presence. Congratulations. I wish you luck as you go towards your graduate, your college, college correct? As you go towards your college, as you go towards college, I wish you luck on that. And I feel that you're gonna do extremely well. And for everyone here who stayed for this performance, thank you for joining me here and Juneteenth, thank you. And I just wanna say that some of the readers were not able to make it tonight, so there are people who are reading cold in front of you tonight. It's truly amazing. Anybody else like to say something, including you? Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. I'd like to say that this is our last year with Megan. And it was our last performances with Megan this year. And now, my only performances with Megan this year. And yeah, now she's a high schooler and I'm never gonna talk to her again, but. But it's still gonna be great. It's still gonna be great. And I wanted to compliment your voice because it's very good. Anybody else? Are you all hankering for a bit of, oh. Thank you very much for all the hard work you put in and the students and the musicians. And I just wanna remind everybody that Vermont has a very deep rich history about this subject, right? And from the little that I've learned over the years, just don't forget that John Brown is buried, not that far away in Lake Placid with his sons and they engaged in one of the first battles of the Civil War, if you agree with me or not. And don't forget that when the train was bringing his body back from Virginia after he was hanged in 1859, it stopped in Virginia. And there was controversy about the pastor for the Unitarian Church who wanted to go down and deliver eulogy. And when he got back, most of his congregation did not return to the church the following Sunday, right? And don't forget that Millbury College, I believe, admitted the first black student, right? And that the Ivy League's rejected. And what did he do? He graduated and went on to become the president of the University of Liberia. And Liberia was where we repatriated a lot of freed slaves and that's another whole story that could take another two hours, if you like. I can go on if you'd like. So I just wanna remind you about that deep rich history, even though we're as far north as we are, even though the Confederates conducted a raid in St. Albans during the Civil War, all these things are all connected then. I appreciate the work you put in. Thank you. And also the underground railroad came through Vermont too. Thank you again, Megan. And students, baby. It is also the last year that we will be seeing Alana. So I just wanted to say, I wanted to say it's cool to have both the eighth graders here. Oh yeah, high schoolers before they go off to high school, well, they go off to high school. Yeah, you guys are cool. Ready for some sweets? All right, thank you all. Thank you. Please try to stop sign.