Douglass, Slavery, and the U.S. Constitution

Diana J. Schaub, "Frederick Douglass: The Constitution Militant," The Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy 22 (Winter 2024).

 In an action almost as momentous as his original escape from enslavement, Frederick Douglass adopted an anti-slavery interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. That 1851 decision took Douglass from a platform avowedly “outside that piece of parchment” to a platform insistently faithful to the words on the page.1

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Once Douglass embraced an anti-slavery reading of the U.S. Constitution, he became a militant constitutionalist. For Douglass, the Constitution was more than a frame of government. The fixity he valued was of a different sort—not a set structure of branches, offices, and procedures, but rather a polestar, guiding progressive improvement. In fact, Douglass named his first newspaper, The North Star, after the “star of hope” that directed runaway slaves in their nighttime travels. When he abandoned Garrisonianism in 1851, Douglass simultaneously began a new publishing venture, the eponymously named Frederick Douglass’ Paper. It was as if the natural celestial pole had been supplemented or maybe replaced by the man-made light of the Constitution. With its Polaris-like Preamble, the Constitution is a permanent source of national self-correction. Because of its orienting power, textual fundamentalism became one of Douglass’s main weapons in the antislavery struggle. For Douglass, behind the Constitution is an ultimate source of illumination: the natural rights theory of the Declaration of Independence. That higher law, in accordance with the truth of human nature, always informs the rule of law. Perhaps most controversially, Douglass argued that the higher law required militant opposition to the unconstitutional 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. In doing so, Douglass believed that he was keeping faith with the letter of the Constitution, as well as the spirit or intentions of the Founders. His vindication of the Founders is more than verbal; it is a summons to imitate them, pledging life, fortune, and sacred honor in the cause of liberty.

Terminology: "Slave" v. "Enslaved Person"

 Jay Nordlinger quotes historian Barbara Fields:

Here’s how I put it to my students. The most famous of all abolitionist speeches is probably the one that Frederick Douglass delivered in Rochester, New York, in 1852. (My grandmother told me that her teachers required pupils to memorize it.) Douglass called the speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He did not call it “What to the Enslaved Person Is the Fourth of July?” If it was good enough for Douglass, I tell my students, it’s good enough for me.

It is misguided to believe that “enslaved” tells more truth than “slave” because “slave” defines the victim by the perpetrator’s crime. This makes as much sense as rejecting the word “hostage” because it defines the hostage by the crime of the hostage-taker.

When I was a graduate student, it was Herbert Gutman from whom I learned an important distinction. When he spoke about slaves doing work, being punished, choosing spouses, having children, taking care of families, mourning the dead, worshiping God, and so on — in short, acting as human beings — he referred to them as “men and women.” What a powerful statement he made by that simple choice of concrete nouns. I pity the person who imagines herself achieving the same result by substituting “enslaved person” for “slave.

MLK Day

 Daniel Stid:

We have to avoid the temptation to domesticate Martin Luther King Jr. It is comforting to see him only as the aspirational dreamer of a color-blind society, a vision especially reassuring to white Americans, and leave things at that. But there was a prophetic radicalness to King’s statesmanship, and a telling critique of the American political tradition, that we also must reckon with, learn from, and respond to.

The great political scientist Herbert Storing made this point more broadly in introducing a volume of political writings by African Americans (including King) that he edited and published in 1970. Using the language of that era, Storing observed that,

“When young Frederick Douglass, speaking before the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1847, asked, “What Country Have I?”, he put a question that circumstances compel every black American to ask. And when Douglass affirmed that he had no love for America and that, indeed, he had no country, he gave an answer that every thoughtful black in America has had to consider. This was not Douglass’s final answer, as it has not been the final answer of most blacks in America; but the question does not thereby lose its potency [Storing’s emphasis]....In important respects, then, black Americans are like a revolutionary or, more interestingly perhaps, a founding generation. That is, they are in the difficult but potentially glorious position of not being able to take for granted given political arrangements and values, of having to seriously canvass alternatives, to think through their implications, and to make a deliberate choice. To understand the American polity, one could hardly do better than to study, along with the work and thought of the founders, the best writings of the blacks who are at once its friends, enemies, citizens, and aliens.”

It is thus fitting for us to reflect on the writings, speeches, and acts of Martin Luther King Jr. on the national holiday we have established to honor this great American statesman. It is also fitting that the United States has built a memorial to King on our National Mall, poised on a line between the memorials honoring Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. It is especially fitting that, backed by Lincoln, King looks across the Tidal Basin toward Jefferson with the steadfastness of one who has come to collect an outstanding debt.

The "Lincoln-Douglass" Debates!

Gillian Brockell at WP:

Of all the paragraphs in a bill to ban “divisive concepts” from being taught in Virginia public schools, Section B3 may have seemed the most innocuous. After all, it was in the part of the proposal that defined what could actually be taught in history classes, not the myriad things that would be banned or the consequences teachers could face for teaching them, including prosecution and getting fired.

Section B3 of the bill, which was sponsored by Republican freshman Del. Wren Williams, defined what could be taught as “the founding documents,” like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, excerpts from the Federalist Papers, the writings of the Founding Fathers and Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic “Democracy in America.” Oh, and one more thing: “the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.”

It was a clear reference to the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates, one of the high points in this country’s intellectual, moral and civic history, but there’s just one problem: Lincoln did not debate Frederick Douglass.

 By Friday morning, Frederick Douglass was trending on Twitter, and the bill had been withdrawn.

Frederick Douglass: "Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters." https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/4398

Frederick Douglass, 1871: "Victory to the Rebellion Meant Death to the Republic"

Frederick Douglass, "The Unknown Loyal Dead,"
Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1871

Friends and Fellow Citizens:

Tarry here for a moment. My words shall be few and simple. The solemn rites of this hour and place call for no lengthened speech. There is, in the very air of this resting-ground of the unknown dead a silent, subtle and all-pervading eloquence, far more touching, impressive, and thrilling than living lips have ever uttered. Into the measureless depths of every loyal soul it is now whispering lessons of all that is precious, priceless, holiest, and most enduring in human existence.

Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we bring to-day is due alike to the patriot soldiers dead and their noble comrades who still live; for, whether living or dead, whether in time or eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for country and freedom are one and inseparable.

Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits, reached, in their glorious career that last highest point of nobleness beyond which human power cannot go. They died for their country.

No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.

When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious, preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord, when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government throughout the world, had reached the point of supreme peril, when the Union of these states was torn and rent asunder at the center, and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundations of American society, the unknown braves who flung themselves into the yawning chasm, where cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell. They died for their country.

We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation's life and those who struck to save it, those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice.

I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant; but may my "right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," if I forget the difference between the parties to hat terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.

If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows and orphans; which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our youth; which has sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold, swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves and planted agony at a million hearthstones -- I say, if this war is to be forgotten, I ask, in the name of all things sacred, what shall men remember?

The essence and significance of our devotions here to-day are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense of bravery, we should find enough on both sides to kindle admiration. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal soldier.

But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic. We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation's destroyers. If today we have a country not boiling in an agony of blood, like France, if now we have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage, if the American name is no longer a by-word and a hissing to a mocking earth, if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army who rest in these honored graves all around us.

Frederick Douglass on the Composite Nation

In an 1869 speech in Boston, Frederick Douglass advocated the acceptance of Chinese immigration. Excerpts:

I am especially to speak to you of the character and mission of the United States, with special reference to the question whether we are the better or the worse for being composed of different races of men. I propose to consider first, what we are, second, what we are likely to be, and, thirdly, what we ought to be.

Without undue vanity or unjust depreciation of others, we may claim to be, in many respects, the most fortunate of nations. We stand in relation to all others, as youth to age. Other nations have had their day of greatness and glory; we are yet to have our day, and that day is coming. The dawn is already upon us. It is bright and full of promise. Other nations have reached their culminating point. We are at the beginning of our ascent. They have apparently exhausted the conditions essential to their further growth and extension, while we are abundant in all the material essential to further national growth and greatness.
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I need to stop here to name or describe the missions of other and more ancient nationalities. Ours seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of Government, world embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is to make us the make perfect national illustration of the unit and dignity of the human family, that the world has ever seen.

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There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear. They have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.

But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men.

I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours. Right wrongs no man. If respect is had to majorities, the fact that only one fifth of the population of the globe is white, the other four fifths are colored, ought to have some weight and influence in disposing of this and similar questions. It would be a sad reflection upon the laws of nature and upon the idea of justice, to say nothing of a common Creator, if four fifths of mankind were deprived of the rights of migration to make room for the one fifth. If the white race may exclude all other races from this continent, it may rightfully do the same in respect to all other lands, islands, capes and continents, and thus have all the world to itself. Thus what would seem to belong to the whole, would become the property only of a part. So much for what is right, now let us see what is wise.

Frederick Douglass

At The Guardian, John Gardner reviews David Blight's Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

If Frederick Douglass had been born white in 19th-century America, he would be remembered as a self-made man in the style of Thomas Edison. In 20th-century America, postwar, he could have been a counselor to presidents, like James A Baker, or perhaps a media personality, even Walter Cronkite.

But he was born a slave, in Maryland in 1818, and he escaped to freedom and a life of voice and pen, thundering against slavery and for justice and the rights of African Americans and women – while becoming all those other things as well.

His second wife, Helen, wrote of “the shining angel of truth by whose side I believe he was born, and by his side he unflinchingly walked through his life”. Indeed, Douglass seemed protected. He was taught to read (then a crime) by a white woman, Sophia Auld, in the family that enslaved him. He worked in Baltimore, was converted as a teenager to a strong personal faith, and taught himself oratory from sermons and books. In 1838 he escaped north, making a new life and taking a new surname, adapted from Sir Walter Scott.

As David Blight writes, “Douglass’ great gift … is that he found ways to convert the scars Covey [a slave master] left on his body into words that might change the world. His travail under Covey’s yoke became Douglass’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Douglass and the Constitution

There has been much discussion of the Constitution in recent months. The House floor reading of the document has drawn attention to its relationship to slavery. Peter C. Myers provides some historical context. He writes that escaped slave Frederick Douglass was critical of the Constitution in his youth, but then had a change of heart (a point that our textbook mentions on pp. 62-63).

Douglass publicly announced his change of opinion in the spring of 1851, but his most powerful statement of his revised view appears, fittingly enough, in his speech at an Independence Day celebration in 1852. In that speech, often considered the greatest of all abolitionist speeches, he excoriated America’s injustices no less vigorously than he ever had, but he took great care to distinguish America’s practice from its first principles and the actions of its subsequent generations from those of its Founders.

“The signers of the Declaration of Independence,” Douglass told his audience that day, “were brave men. They were great men too…. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes.” In his discerning view, however, the main source of their greatness—the virtue that enabled them to be more than revolutionaries, the Founders of a great republic—inhered not in their bravery but in their dedication to the “eternal principles,” the “saving principles,” set forth in the unique revolutionary document they dared to sign. “Your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately…and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you…. Mark them!”[15]

In truth, Douglass had long admired the Declaration and the Revolution; but now, having broken with the Garrisonian variant of abolitionism, he had come to admire the whole of the Founding, because he had come to judge the Constitution to be faithful to the saving principles of the Declaration. The charge of a pro-slavery Constitution was “a slander upon [the] memory” of the Framers, he contended; “interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.” Consider “the constitution according to its plain reading,” Douglass continued, “and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.”