Last year I recognized the history of the United States on July 4 and again on July 5.

I watched fireworks on the national holiday from a park on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.

The day after, July 5, I biked to an annual event held at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in the Anacostia neighborhood of D.C. This National Park Service site includes Cedar Hill, which was the home Douglass shared with his family in his later life.

The National Park Service holds an annual contest to help young people learn about Douglass. For this contest, students in grades 1 to 12 memorize part of one of his speeches and perform before a panel of judges.

Winners of this contest later may join some grown-ups on July 5 at Cedar Hill to take turns reading parts of a speech that Douglass gave in 1852.

Its title is “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

Below are my photos from the event.

Douglass emphasized a rejection of the July 4 holiday in his July 5 speech, given at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York.

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim,” Douglass said.

Douglass himself had been born into slavery in Maryland. He escaped in 1838. One of the most talented writers of his time, Douglass spent much of his adult life on the lecture circuit, campaigning for an end to slavery in the United States.

The enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it harder for Black people to fend off attempts to re-enslave them. It also created penalties for people who tried to help others escape from slavery.

Rochester served as a transit point for Black people fleeing into Canada. Douglass had been living in the area since around 1847. In his July 5, 1852, address, he wanted his neighbors to appreciate the harm the Fugitive Slave Act had done.

“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 & Dixon’s line has been 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 co-extensive with the star-spangled banner, and American Christianity,” Douglass said.

Douglass describes the July Fourth holiday’s rejoicing about liberty as “hollow mockery” and “mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

“There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour,” Douglass said.

“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” is a brilliant and biting speech. I encourage you to read it or listen to it yourself. (There’s a bibliography at the end of this post to sources used in my research, including one with a link to the text of this speech.)

It’s inspiring to contrast the tone of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” with that of a speech that Douglass gave a few years after the Civil War.

Douglass traveled the lecture circuit in 1869, describing a bright future for the United States in his “Our Composite Nation” speech. In it, Douglass predicted the country would emerge from the aftermath of the Civil War primed to benefit from the talents of people of different complexions and religious views.

“In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds,” Douglass said. “It would be madness to set up any one race above another, or one religion above another.”

Douglass had reason for the optimism expressed in “Our Composite Nation.”

Consider the three major changes made to the Constitution in the years after the Civil War.

The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, established birthright citizenship and reiterated the rights to due process and equal protection for all.

By late 1869, much of the groundwork for the Fifteenth Amendment was complete, although it was ratified in the following year. This amendment forbids states from blocking people from voting due to their race. (Douglass also fought to secure women’s right to vote, but that’s a topic for another post.)

In 1869, the United States looked like a nation ready to attract entrepreneurial people from around the world, Douglass said. He wanted the country to do better. In “Our Composite Nation,” Douglass criticizes discrimination against people from China.

Chinese immigrants had helped develop the western United States, particularly in terms of building railroads and digging in mines. These immigrants were often abused and taken advantage of. They accepted low wages for dangerous work. Many of these immigrants returned to China after working in the United States, a decision easy to understand in light of the hostile reception they got.

Douglass argued for encouraging Chinese workers to stay and become part of a “composite nation.”

“I have said that the Chinese will come, and have given some reasons why we may expect them in very large numbers in no very distant future,” Douglass said. “Do you ask, if I favor such immigration, I answer I would. Would you have them naturalized, and have them invested with all the rights of American citizenship? I would. Would you allow them to vote? I would. Would you allow them to hold office? I would.”

Douglass allowed that there were cultural differences between the Chinese immigrants and many of the people already living in the United States. But he saw this as an advantage.

An objection to the Chinese immigrant “is that he cannot be induced to swear by the Bible,” Douglass said.

“This is to me one of his best recommendations,” Douglass said. “The American people will swear by anything in the heavens above or in the earth beneath. We are a nation of swearers. We swear by a book whose most authoritative command is to swear not at all.”

This is the first post for “Loving the Beautiful Country,” my new Substack about the United States, past and present. There’s not a set publication schedule yet for it.

I already have a weekly Substack,Snack, that is meant to be a little distraction from the news of the day. I write there almost exclusively on things I find cheerful, with many posts on art and architecture. Flowers and food are also big themes.

“Loving the Beautiful Country” is meant for stories about the United States that I find inspiring.

But these stories will often recall how the United States made it through some very dark times in the past, with the idea that we will make it through present and future challenges.

For example, “Composite Nation” is a speech of beautiful sentiments that Douglass gave at a time of great optimism in 1869. Unfortunately the United States soon after headed in exactly the opposite direction from what Douglass wanted.

1877 is considered the end of what’s known as the Reconstruction period, when the federal government sought to prevent discrimination against Black people in the formerly Confederate states. The federal government pulled the troops who had been stationed in the South to protect the rights of Black citizens. Southern states implemented so-called Jim Crow measures, intended to prevent Blacks from voting. The United States still has a lot of work to do to address the harms caused by post-1877 racist laws and policies.

1882 brought the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States.

It also prohibited Chinese immigrants living in the United States from becoming naturalized citizens. While the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally repealed in 1943, severe restrictions on Chinese immigration continued until 1965, said Rep. Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives.

“For sixty years of our history, America closed its doors to the Chinese people. During this period, Chinese immigrants already living in the United States were prevented from becoming citizens, regardless of how long they had called this country home,” McCollum said in this 2012 speech. “This official discrimination by the government of the United States against people of Chinese descent was deeply wrong and a fundamental violation of America’s principles of equality and justice.”

The title for this Substack comes from the Chinese word for the United States, měiguó 美国.

The guó 国is the word for a country or nation.

The měiguó 美 国iis an attempt to capture the sound of the word America.

But měi 美 is the word for beautiful. So the United States in Chinese is the beautiful country.

And the United States is a beautiful country in terms of potential and promise.

It’s the country that gave the world Frederick Douglass and many other people whose deeds and words inspire us. It’s also the country still leading the world in medical research, which is what I write about for my “day job” as a health care journalist.

Scientists in the United States are increasingly doing important work to find new ways to cure and prevent disease, often in cooperation with colleagues at universities in China. At the same time, U.S. researchers and biotechs and pharmaceutical companies also face increased competition from their counterparts in China.

All of this makes for a truly exciting time in medical research, a topic I plan to also cover here in this new “Loving the Beautiful Country” Substack.

Sources:

National Park Service: Annual Oratorical Contest. Scroll down on this NPS web page for links to text of speeches by Douglass

Tracey, Liz, “The Fifteenth Amendment: Annotated,” JSTORY Daily, Oct. 24, 2025

McCollum, Betty, floor speech expressing regret about passages of laws adversely affecting the Chinese in the United States, Congressional Record, June 18, 2012

Library of Congress website : Frederick Douglass timeline | Reconstruction: A Resource Guide

National Archives: Chinese Exclusion Act

New York History website: Our Composite Nation online exhibition materials

For 19th Century Writer Who Understood the Power of Images (Click here for a link to get beyond the Medium paywall.) For images of a recent tribute to Douglass, check out Bridge to Cross Over and Over Again.