In light of the current United States Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, what did Frederick Douglass have to say about a Supreme Court gone rouge in the 1857 Dred Scott decision? Scott was suing the government to gain his freedom.

Nathan M. Richardson, poet, author and Frederick Douglass Interpreter who has been performing across the country for the last ten years, just released a mini film of the 1857 Dred Scott Speech by Frederick Douglass. Douglass wrote the speech in response to the Supreme Court Dred Scott decision.

This mini film presents a six-minute contextualized version of
the full eight page speech written by Frederick Douglass. Richardson deleted some content for brevity but he added none.

The mini film

The text:

“Mr. Chairman friends and fellow citizens, while 4 million of our fellow countrymen are in chains, while men women and children are bought and sold on the auction block with horses sheep and swine, while the remorseless slave with draws the warm blood of our common humanity, it is meet we are today as we lift up our hearts and  voices in earnest denunciation of this vile and shocking abomination.

You remember it was settled 36 years ago when Missouri was admitted into the union and slavery prohibited in all territories north of 36° of north latitude. The fact is, the more the question has been settled, the more it has needed settling. We are now told the day is lost.  All is lost and we might as well give up the struggle. The highest authority has spoken. Well I have no fear of the national conscience. The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in the world. It is very great but the supreme court of the Almighty is greater.

Judge Tawny can do many things but he cannot perform impossibilities. There is a law, says Brougham, above all the enactments of human codes and by that law unchangeable and eternal. Man cannot hold property in man! To decide against that right, is to decide against God, It is an open rebellion against God’s government. You may close up your supreme court against the black man’s cry for justice, but you cannot, thank God, close against him the ear of the sympathizing world, nor shut up the court of heaven.

By all the laws of nature and of civilization, slavery is a doom system. Not all the skills of politicians north and south, not all the sophistries of judges, not all the fulminations of a corrupt press, not all the< hypocritical prayers or hypocritical refuses to pray of a hollow hearted priesthood can save this vile thing from extermination.

Nowhere in the constitution is there a single mention of the term slave, slaveholder, slave master or slave state, neither is there a reference to color. I asked then, any man, to read the constitution and tell me where he will find a guarantee for slavery. The slave holders of the south and many of their wicked allies in the north claimed the Bible for slavery. Shall we therefore fling away the Bible is a proslavery book? It would be about as reasonable to fling away the constitution. The constitution knows all the human inhabitants of this country as “The People!”

So in conclusion let me say.  All I asked of the American people, is that they live up to the constitution, adopt its principles and imbibe in its spirit. When this is done, the wounds of my bleeding people will be healed. The chain will no longer rust on their ankles. Their backs will not be torn by the bloody lash. And liberty, the glorious birthright of our common humanity, will become the inheritance of this highly favored country.