IN AN ABOLITIONIST observance of the Fourth of July in
1860 at Framingham, Massachusetts, under the auspices of
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, a young black or-
ator advanced a novel reason for the cracking of the Liberty
Bell the first time it had been rung. The bell cracked, said H. Ford
Douglas, the featured speaker of the occasion, because it simply
did not have enough brass to tell the lie conveyed by its inscription,
"Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants
thereof." ¹

More than a personal pique, this quip by Douglas revealed an
attitude that was common among antebellum blacks. They were
less likely than others to be carried away by the patriotic, spread-
eagle "spirit of '76," with its glorification of the Declaration of
Independence, and its annual flag-waving, band-playing, fireworks
celebration of that document's natal day, July 4. White Americans
might regard the Declaration of Independence as a beacon light.
To a black spokesman like H. Ford Douglas, however, it was a
flickering torch at best, its flame fitful.

Afro-Americans had a critical sense of their country's history,
their condition permitting no easy escape into a national folklore,
no matter how illustrious its origins or how alluring its accents.
Their experiences had taught blacks that the great affirmations of
the Declaration of Independence did not mean the same thing to
whites as to blacks. Before the Revolutionary War had come to a
close, it had become clear that to most whites the blacks in their
midst did not fall within the abstractions of the Declaration of
Independence.

White Americans, whether slaveholders or not, found it possible

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