Republished with permission from Steve Schmidt

This July 4th will mark the 249th anniversary of the independence of the United States of America.

America stands at an hour of crisis because an American president, his faction and his lieutenants have repudiated the cornerstone of America’s identity, which is freedom.

American liberty is being strangled by Donald Trump and his gangsters.

The pursuit of happiness is being choked by corruption, self-dealing, extremism and a wretched collaboration between MAGA politicians, billionaires, preachers, foreign interests, crypto speculators, hate merchants, propagandists and extremists who despise what America has become.

They seek to undo the progress that has been made to the summit of the mountaintop where the “city upon a hill” will be completed, and the just society achieved.

This year, my patriotism requires me to dissent.

I must write, speak out, organize and oppose the vicious men and women who hold power in this moment.

We must repudiate Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, and the small band of extremists because we love our country, not because we hate them.

We must despise what they are doing without becoming their mirror images and reciprocating their hatreds.

We must do it together.

This July 4th, I will mourn and reach for the wisdom of America’s greatest patriots who have been America’s greatest dissidents when forces pulled America from her promise towards the darkness.

Among the greatest speeches in American history was the one delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 4, 1852, in Rochester, New York, at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

It is a long speech, and worth the read.

Below are three excerpts.

The first comes from the middle of the speech. It must be at the center of how Americans who oppose the wickedness at hand process this moment on the day ahead of celebrating the past and the magnificence of yesterday’s achievements:

My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now.

“Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God overhead.”

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 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 blest by your labors.

You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence.

Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or 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 father,” when they had long lost Abraham’s faith and spirit.

That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham’s great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great.

Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day?

Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous?

Washington could not die till 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 and 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 oft’ interred with their bones.”

When Douglass rose to speak, he began his address by framing the monumental achievements of the American founders and expressed his awe as we should, 173 years after Douglass did.

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom.

This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God.

It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day.

This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old.

I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood.

I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is 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, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence.

May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny?

Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier.

Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow.

There is consolation in the thought that America is young.

Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages.

They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties.

They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely 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 departed glory.

As with rivers so with nations.

Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at 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 you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown.

Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgement, it deemed wise, right and proper.

But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints.

They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need 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 worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776.

To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discanton the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies.

It is fashionable to do so; 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 so 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 the 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.

Feeling 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 remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner.

Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable.

This, however, did not answer the purpose.

They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back.

As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure.

The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support.

But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.

The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly 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 restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity.

With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

Such people lived then, had lived before, 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 as much 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 strongly in favor.

These people were called tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.

Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferationsagainst it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.

On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national 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 at 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 State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”

Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th 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 to hold it in perpetual remembrance. 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 round 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 all is lost. Cling to this day—cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.

The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness.

The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime.

The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war.

The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now.

Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline.

From the Potomac to the 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.

It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men.

The point from 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 fathers 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 peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage.

They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating 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.

Here is how Frederick Douglass concluded his remarks:

“Do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.

While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and 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 round in the same old path of its fathers without interference.

The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly 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 in mental darkness.

But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the 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 chartered 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, distinctly heard on the other.

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved.

The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force.

No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.

The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But all to 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 I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive–
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.

Happy 4th of July.