Douglass, Garrison, And The Constitution

Two abolitionists, one Constitution, and a nation on the brink. We sit with the razor’s edge between moral clarity and political strategy as William Lloyd Garrison brands the Constitution a “covenant with death,” while Frederick Douglass insists the same document, read rightly, is a “glorious liberty document.” Their split isn’t a footnote—it’s the pulse of the 1850s, beating through the Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Act, Kansas-Nebraska, and the violence of “Bleeding Kansas.”

We unpack why Garrison believed disunion was a moral necessity and how he read clauses like the Three-Fifths Compromise as proof of a pro-slavery charter. Then we follow Douglass’s turn: after condemning the nation’s hypocrisy with prophetic force, he stakes his hope on the preamble’s purposes and the Constitution’s silences, arguing that law can be reclaimed and wielded against bondage. That conviction eventually guides him toward the emerging Republican Party, where stopping slavery’s spread becomes the first strategic step to ending it.

Along the way, we examine how interpretations of founding texts shape real-world choices—boycott or build, secede or salvage, purity or power. By the time Douglass and Lincoln find common cause, the stakes are existential: can a Union scarred by compromise still deliver on its promise of liberty? This conversation threads original sources, political flashpoints, and the lived moral urgency that drove abolitionism. If you care about how movements decide between breaking institutions and bending them toward justice, this one maps the territory with clarity and heart.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others find these conversations. What do you think: is the Constitution fundamentally pro-slavery or anti-slavery—and why?

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Transcript

Setting The Stakes For 1850s America

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome back to Civics in the Year. Dr. Paul Kreese is back with us. And Dr. Kreese, in the previous episode, did an episode on Frederick Douglass and what to the slave is the 4th of July. And he mentions these debates on slavery in the Constitution with Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison. So, Dr. Kreese, I'm so excited that we're going to have this conversation. So both William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass were abolitionists regarding American slavery, but they had differing views on whether the Constitution actually supported the continuation of slavery. Can you kind of provide us a general picture of this debate about slavery and the Constitution in the 1850s, please?

Who Douglass And Garrison Were

From Founding Compromises To Rising Tensions

Missouri To Kansas-Nebraska: The Fuse Lit

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Yes, thank you. These are incredibly important questions, obviously, because the debate is part of the path to the Civil War. The issues at question here about the meaning of the Constitution and what views different Americans should adopt about slavery and the Constitution ultimately do lead to the Civil War. They're also important for us, you know, approaching two centuries later for understanding both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And this compromise, I would call it, compromise that was made at the time of 1776 and then again in 1787, that suggested we can't do away or abolish slavery right now, in 1776 or 1787. And and the the differing views of what the what what those compromises of this founding period meant about the continuing status of slavery in relation to our founding principles. So let me give begin at the beginning here. Who are Frederick Douglass and William White Garrison? Frederick Douglass is arguably the most famous escaped slave of the 19th century, this extraordinarily determined and eloquent advocate for liberty and for abolitionism. He educates himself once he has escaped slavery and quickly becomes a very famous abolitionist figure in the abolitionist movement, which really starts by the 1820s, 1830s, there's an abolitionist movement. And then William Lloyd Garrison is a leading abolitionist in New England and then nationally. He's from the Boston area, he's a journalist and a printer, and then he becomes more famous as an abolitionist and a social reformer. And William Lloyd Garrison, in effect, takes in Frederick Douglass in the 1840s, and and Douglas and Garrison are quite close to each other and hold very similar views about these issues, particularly of the Constitution and what it says about slavery and the position of abolitionism. So in initially, Douglass agrees with Garrison that, in effect, the Constitution is a pro-slavery document. And therefore, for these Garrisonians, as they're called, the Constitution is a problem regarding what to do about slavery. And then Douglas changes his mind. Douglas splits with Garrison on this, and it ends up being a split between the two of them, just period. Douglas is still very much an abolitionist, famous in his own right, leaves the New England and moves to upstate New York, as it's called, uh Rochester, the western tier of New York, headed toward the Great Lakes, sets up his own newspaper. Garrison's famous newspaper is called The Liberator. Douglas starts his own newspaper in the 1840s in Rochester, New York, called The North Star. And it's a really stark, eventually complete split between the two of them. Let me just set a little more context for here what's going on, these arguments in the 1850s between Garrison and Douglas about the Constitution, what its real position is about slavery and the continuation of slavery. From Garrison's point of view, from the abolitionist point of view, to be fair, and we'll talk more about what Garrison thinks and what Douglas thinks, but to be fair, from the anti-slavery point of view, things had gotten worse since the founding period about slavery. We'll talk about this. Things were definitely mixed, right? 1776, 1787. But in 1787, the Articles of Confederation Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance governing the territory. So the Northwest ends up being five or you know parts of five total and maybe a sixth state, right? Including Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln ends up, but you know, Missouri, I'm sorry, Minnesota and part of Wisconsin and Ohio, and you know. So it's a big chunk of territory up there. And the Articles of Confederation Congress, with obviously slave-holding states represented there, they abolish slavery. They abolished slavery in that Northwest territory. And the first Congress under the new Constitution in 1789 repasses that Northwest ordinance word for word. We're talking James Madison among minor members of that Congress in 1789. And it's signed by George Washington as U.S. law under the new Constitution, Northwest ordinance, the Congress has the power to abolish slavery in the territories. Okay. And then in 1808, the the clause in the 1707 Constitution, which allows Congress to abolish the slave trade, right? Says a later Congress could, as of 1808. Well, that Congress in 1808 under President Jefferson does abolish the slave trade. So it's a mixed record from 1776 to 1808, but it sort of seems to be going in a better direction. Well, actually, it's it's the it's very mixed even by 1808. And then the Missouri Compromise of 1820 really shows how difficult this question is going to be. That's the the advocates of slavery or keeping slavery are not backing down an inch. And it's a very difficult compromise in 1820. There's talk of the Union splitting up and a war, and a compromise is made about admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and it sort of hardens the lines. And from 1820 to 1850, the compromise of 1850, things have not gotten better, things have gotten worse in terms of how stark the division is between the anti-slavery abolitionist views, the pro-slavery views, mostly in the South, but elsewhere, the spread of slavery heading westward. So the Missouri Compromise is an ugly compromise. There's a Fugitive Slave Act passed in Congress based on the Missouri or related to the Missouri Compromise of 1850, that slaves who escaped to the North can, in effect, be hunted down and brought back to the South into slavery, and the northern courts and governors and law sheriffs are supposed to cooperate with this kind of thing. So the temperature just keeps going up and up. The grounds for any ultimate remedy or solution to this are not anywhere to be found. The abolitionist movement is getting stronger or sterner in its views. Next we get the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which effectively repeals the effectively repeals the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise had tried to draw a line from the southern border of Missouri across the country, basically to the Pacific Ocean notionally. There can't be slavery north of that line, but there can be slavery south of it. Ugly compromise, but if you're an abolitionist, because it suggests it's okay, it could happen, that slavery keeps spreading across the southern third of the country. Well, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, if you're against slavery, it's even worse than that. It repeals the Missouri compromise. It says, under this doctrine that another Douglass, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, different spelling, only one S at the end. Senator Stephen Douglas says, let the people decide. Let's do this by democracy. Let the people in the territories vote on whether there should or shouldn't be slavery in the territory. Agnostic about it. And then Kansas in particular becomes literally a battleground after the Kansas Nebraska-Nebraska Act of 1854. And it's eventually the name is used Bloody Kansas, because both abolitionists and pro-slavery people want to fight this out. Pro-slavery people want to bring slaves into the state and bring white people in favor of slavery into the state. So if there's ever a territorial vote, and people like John Brown and his sons are moving into Kansas, and there's literal bloodshed and killing both ways about this. So that's the context of this debate between Garrison and Douglas, both abolitionists, about how did we get here? And what does the what guidance comes from the Constitution? Is it pro-slavery or anti-slavery?

SPEAKER_01 10:40

So what were Garrison's main arguments for viewing the Constitution as a pro-slavery document? And what policy did he advocate for abolitionism in the mid-1850s after the Kansas and Nebraska Act in 1854 suggested greater toleration for slavery's westward expansion into the American territories?

Garrison’s “Covenant With Death” Case

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Yeah, Garrison, as I just recounted in the in all these facts, you know, you have to say, in one sense, Garrison has a reasonable concern here. The history of American political development is not heading in anything like an anti-slavery direction. It seems to be getting worse and worse. And and so he takes the view, he he had used a phrase in an 1854 address in Boston, that the Constitution is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell. And there could be no more compromises by abolitionists, Christians and abolitionists, with this pro-slavery union, this pro-slavery constitution. And so his policy view, in effect, is secession. If you are a Christian and you are an abolitionist, just look at the record of the past several decades. Things are only getting worse in this union of the United States of America about slavery. And so he, in an I what I want to focus on is that not the 1854 address, but an 1855 address, which openly calls for the dissolution of the Union. So this is an interesting point for us to think about as students of American history, as citizens, if something is so morally evil in your judgment, and and you see the United States government and state governments, and you know, uh would you call for, you know, leaving, I'm gonna leave the country? Would you secede, call for disillusioning the union? Well, this is where Garrison is. And and one point to make here is that his you know, strident abolitionism and criticism of what the union compromises had been for decades becomes the kind of mirror image or the echo of the pro-slavery arguments in the South that the Union is useless, worse than useless. The union is totally booked and cooked against slavery, and we uh we need to be prepared to fight. Uh and that that rhetoric increases as the 1850s go on, and it leads obviously after Lincoln is elected in 1860, to open session in 1861. So in the 1855 address, Garrison says there should be one united shout of no union with slaveholders. That that's where abolitionism has finally reached. And he explicitly argues, as he had before, that if you read the Constitution, if you look at the people who wrote it and ratified it, if you look at all the acts of courts and legislators and Congresses, even the Supreme Court of the United States, and this is before the Dred Scott decision in 1857, right? If you look at all that, no reasonable person could possibly view the Constitution as anything other than intending and meaning to protect slavery, and also that slavery is just fine. It's a pro-slavery document. The three-fifths clause, that the compromise about representation on the House of Representatives, that you know, for the southern slaveholding states to agree to the deal, they had much less territory of free white people. I'm sorry, they had much less population of free white people than the northern states. So to balance that out, their apportionment for seats in the House of Representatives, their total population would include three-fifths of all other persons for the total headcount and number. And so in this 1855 address, Douglas, I'm sorry, excuse me, Garrison repeats the phrase from the 1854 address that the Constitution is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell. And, you know, away with the Constitution, it smells of blood. And eventually using revolutionary language, i.e., the people in charge of the Union, whatever their views about slavery, there's been such compromise with slavery, they're basically King George III. And we need to be revolutionaries. That's the kind of argument Garrison's making in 1855. And by the way, he knows the obvious question is, well, what should be done? How if if if if if say you persuade a state in the North to secede, what happens then? And he basically says, don't, I'm paraphrasing, don't bother me with these practical questions. The first thing we need to do is take a moral stand against the horror, and it is a horror, of slavery. This is our preliminary task, he says. No union with slaveholders. That's the and you know, as if the practical consequences, they whatever they are, it's better than what we have now.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

So then going over to Douglas in his famous 1852 address on slavery and the Fourth of July, he had taken the completely opposite view, right? Seeing the Constitution as anti-slavery. And so as the debate over slavery grew heated and more violent across the decade of the 1850s, does Douglass eventually support the new Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln?

Douglass’s “Glorious Liberty Document” Turn

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Yes, he does. And, you know, we we talked about Douglass's extraordinary 1852 address given on the 5th of July by him, because given the Missouri Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, he wants to make the point that he might be a free man, but any black man, any black person in the United States is in much worse shape as the decades have gone by in America. And so actually one way to read that 1852 address in Rochester I'm sorry, in in Cyper Falls, New York, is that, you know, let's say I'm just going to pick out a number. Three-quarters of the address is just an excoriating condemnation of America with, as we talked about in the other episode, biblical language, you know, prophetic denunciation of Christians in America betraying their Christian principles, of a combination of cowardice, cowardice and ignorance is just about the horrors and crimes of slavery, which Douglass knew firsthand as a slave, and then an escaped slave and a free man. That's two, you know, it's two-thirds or three-quarters of the address. But along the way, he gives a sign of hope about America. He says that the Declaration contains saving principles. And then in the last part of the address, he does say explicitly in opposition to Garrison, he doesn't mention Garrison by name, that the hope for America, in fact, is the Declaration and the Constitution. And I'll ask you to read part of that. But it's it, you know, if you think about it, he's even before Garrison is given these addresses in 1854 and 1855, Douglass wants to be careful about the balance he's holding. You know, if you say the Constitution is not anti- I'm sorry, if you say the Constitution is not pro-slavery and the Constitution is anti-slavery, it could come across as saying, and you know, things are not so bad then. So the address in 1852 by Douglas, I think, then put so much emphasis on the horror and the crime and the moral evil of slavery. So then when he does say, but don't blame it on the Constitution, don't blame it on the Declaration, he doesn't sound like he's wishy-washy and the evil, the horror of slavery. So could you read that that extraordinary statement that Douglass makes toward the end of this 1852 address about the Constitution?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

In that instrument, I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing. But interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask: if it be not somewhat singular that if the Constitution were intended to be by its framers and adopters a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slave holding, nor slave can be found anywhere in it?

Douglass, Republicans, And Lincoln

SPEAKER_00 20:03

So it's just categorical in his view that the fault for slavery being continued perpetuated in the United States is not the fault of the Declaration, it's not the fault of the Constitution of 1787 and the compromises made just to form the Union. It's our fault in the subsequent decades and the subsequent generations. Just after that, he says the plain reading of the Constitution, if you read it, that just obviously I defy that there's a single pro-slavery clause in it. In fact, you'll find principles and purposes entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. So then, yes, you asked about what he does. This is 1852. What does he do as the decade goes on? He eventually sees the Republican Party as as the hopeful middle ground, as the pro-slavery argument is getting bolder, the pro-slavery advocates are saying the declaration is ridiculous, everybody knows it was never literally true that all men are created equal, there's always a superior race and an inferior race. And then the abolitionist argument is getting more extreme and more heated. Douglas does turn to the Republican Party, and Lincoln is not the most famous of the Republicans when the party is launched in 1856, as holding this middle ground that the Constitution is anti-slavery and that slavery should spread no further. And for Douglas, it's not a great position, but the first part of it, the Constitution is anti-slavery, that's right. And so the extreme abolitionists are wrong, and the pro-slavery people are wrong. And then as a sort of political vessel for the moment, Douglass is willing to say, okay, the Republicans are probably the best bet for preventing things about slavery from getting worse than they are now. And so this alliance eventually forms between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and they eventually meet each other when Lincoln is president. Lincoln invites Douglas to the White House. And I think the last time they meet each other is the Lincoln's second inaugural, which is an extraordinary moment. But anyway, it's the Constitution is a complicated document with complicated compromises, but Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, in this moment of horrible crisis, eventually say we should stick with it. It's better than any of the alternatives in front of us right now.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Dr. Kreese, thank you so much. I love learning about these discussions in early American history and especially. to the question of is the Constitution a pro or anti-slavery document and having, you know, these two men kind of discuss and talk about it. So thank you so much. And I look forward to our next episode.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Okay. Thanks, Frank. Thanks very much and thanks for your good work.