Frederick Douglass's Antislavery Constitution

• In Event: July Fourth to Juneteenth: Black Engagement with America’s First Principles

Abstract

This paper analyzes Frederick Douglass’s antislavery interpretation of the Constitution. It traces the evolution of his early Garrisonian view of the document as a covenant with death to his mature interpretation of it as a “Glorious Liberty Document.” It considers the intellectual influence of constitutional abolitionists like Gerrit Smith and Lysander Spooner on Douglass’s political thought. Special consideration is given to Douglass’s textualist interpretation of the document in his March 26, 1860 speech. The conclusion compares Douglass’s radical antislavery view of the Constitution to Abraham Lincoln’s view of precedent and the prevailing federal consensus at the time. I aim to show that Douglass’s interpretation is worth remembering today in view of modern recasting of proslavery interpretations of the document.

Author

• Joseph R. Fornieri