June 19th marks the freeing of the nation’s last enslaved persons, the actual end of slavery in America. That is of course great cause for celebration by descendants of enslaved persons. But it is also a fundamentally important national holiday for all Americans. To think of it as a holiday for only a portion of the population is misguided. All patriotic Americans really should celebrate.
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech titled “What to the Slave is The Fourth of July?” He reminded his audience that the liberties secured in the American Revolution were not shared by the enslaved population. So there would be no reason for the slave to celebrate; in fact, celebration would be mockery and irony to him.
But Douglass did not denigrate the American Revolution. In particular, he called The Declaration of Independence “the RINGBOLT to the chain of your nation’s destiny … 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.”
Rights, equally and inherently endowed in every person, define this nation, as Douglass’ ringbolt analogy implies. The injustice was that so many were definitively, explicitly, and officially excluded from it.
Juneteenth ended the formal exclusion. The enslaved and their descendants had and have good reason to celebrate. But everyone had been living in a society that transgressed its own founding Truths. That hypocrisy was alleviated, on paper in the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, but in living fact on Juneteenth.
To be sure, Jim Crow and segregation took hold in the aftermath, and discrimination only dies a slow and grudging death, over multiple generations at best. But slavery was always an abomination for a nation founded on principle. Some have called slavery and racism America’s original sin, but that term suggests something that, if undone, erases the “owner,” like everyone’s physical conception in sexual relations. Slavery, by our founding principles, deserves no such standing. It and racism can and should be eradicated from this nation. On Juneteenth, slavery was.
Liberation from hypocrisy sounds trite, particularly compared to liberation from enslavement. But the liberation is only one step of what America should celebrate on this day. A nation founded on abstract Truths of liberty for all will always have to contend with a world of flesh and fear. The highest ideals need a living vessel to carry them in spirit, and keeping that vessel afloat, as a principled nation in a grubby world, will always incur compromises. We have, for instance, fought our biggest wars, which defeated tyrannical regimes, with draftees. Life as a nation of principle demands a constant moral wrestling from its constituents. To give a few less controversial examples: When must I concede my rights in the name of free society – in the form of taxes or traffic tickets or anything else? When can I indulge my wants and when do I need to defer to others’ rights – by keeping my party’s music down or labelling the products I sell? When does the nation need to curtail some liberties for individuals in order to secure the larger environment for everyone’s freedom, be it in anti-trust law, even martial law in a war zone? We will always face compromises. But our founding demands that we keep moving to realize the self-evident Truths, as best we can.
Actual slavery was always a fundamental contravention of our founding principle. It persisted as an anachronism, tolerated for the sake of national consensus to maintain the new nation’s political existence, that living vessel that allows principle to take root and expand in reach. With slavery, the great contravention, finally erased, the nation took a, huge and necessary step, toward realizing our founding creed in a grubby world.
As Douglass said in 1852, the Declaration and its principles offered hope. The enslaved needed hope for very clear ends. But all persons will need hope for many more generations, and every step to realizing our tenets further will vindicate that hope, most just a bit more, some in bigger steps.
Juneteenth marks a massive step in bringing our creed of right that much closer to reality, offering all Americans that additional vindication of our national experiment. That experiment tests the nation as a whole, not just descendants of the enslaved. It is not just as a correction but proof that the experiment can work, that a People named by a principle can endure and grow. We should all celebrate, in the most patriotic spirit, together.
Common Conviction 