by Dennis C. Rasmussen
The remarkable story of how Frederick Douglass went from condemning the Constitution as a proslavery pact to celebrating it as a “glorious liberty document” that promises freedom to everyone
The speeches and writings of Frederick Douglass contain some of the most probing examinations ever of the role that slavery played in America’s founding. In Frederick Douglass’s American Founding, Dennis Rasmussen traces the great abolitionist’s intellectual journey from denouncing the founders as hypocrites and the Constitution as evil to embracing them both.
Throughout the 1840s, Douglass described the founders as “little better than a band of pirates” and the Constitution as “a most cunningly-devised and wicked compact.” Beginning in 1849, however, he undertook a long period of study and reflection that produced a dramatic change of mind. From 1851 on, Douglass contended that the founders were resolutely opposed to slavery and that the Constitution was a “glorious liberty document” that mandated immediate emancipation, despite several clauses that appeared to suggest otherwise. Even after embracing the Constitution and the founders, Douglass remained second to none in castigating America for the evils of slavery. Indeed, as he argued in his greatest speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852), the glory of the nation’s founding ideals only put their persistent betrayal into starker relief. Douglass also came to regard the founders as radicals in their fight against tyranny. That was why he insisted that he and his fellow abolitionists, rather than moderates like Abraham Lincoln, were the founders’ true heirs.
At a time when Americans are turning to the founding with renewed interest thanks to the 250th anniversary of 1776, it is also worth our while to look anew at Frederick Douglass, for his speeches and writings contain some of the most probing examinations ever of the role that slavery played in the founding era. They are all the more fascinating because he dramatically changed his mind about the founding midway through his career.
In the early part of his career-throughout the 1840s-Douglass denounced the founders as wicked oppressors and the Constitution as emphatically proslavery. During this period he was a sort of forerunner of the recent 1619 Project.
From 1851 onward, however, Douglass contended that the founders were resolutely antislavery and that the Constitution was a "glorious liberty document." Here he bore a greater resemblance to the explicitly patriotic 1775 Report.
However, Douglass's mature view of the founding avoids the pitfalls of the dominant perspectives of this period in today's culture wars. He combined deep admiration for the nation's birth with radical criticism of the nation itself.
Strikingly, after Douglass embraced the founding he grew more open to the use of violence against slaveholders, thereby growing more radical in one sense even as he seemed to grow more moderate in another.
In contrast to virtually every historian today, Douglass interpreted the pre-Reconstruction Constitution as an abolitionist charter-one that, if faithfully executed, would have required emancipating every enslaved person in the U.S.
Frederick Douglass's American Founding utilizes several previously unexamined editorials written by Douglass, including one on Thomas Jefferson's notorious racism.
Whatever you think about the founding, Douglass’s arguments will challenge—and perhaps even change—your views. After seeing the Constitution through Douglass’s eyes, it is difficult to look at it in the same way again.
Dennis C. Rasmussen is professor of political science and the Hagerty Family Fellow at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. His books include Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders and The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought (both Princeton University Press).
Princeton University Press
ISBN-13: 978-0691294025
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