Reading Frederick Douglass & William Lloyd Garrison | A Primary Source Close Read w/ BRI

0:04 Hi, this is Tony Williams, and welcome to another Close Read. We will be looking at a couple of very interesting primary sources, and we are very honored to have an illustrious scholar of the Antebellum period with us, Dan Monroe. Dan Monroe is an associate professor of history and the Department of History

0:26 and Political Science Chair at Milliken University. He earned his doctorate at the University of Illinois. Champagne. He has also taught teachers for several years at the Ashbrook Center’s Masters program for Teachers. Dr. Monroe is currently president of the Illinois State Historical Society and is a member of the board of the Abraham Lincoln Association.

0:48 Dr. Monroe serves as the Illinois historian on the Board of Trustees of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. He has received many awards for teaching and was a fellow at the Virginia Historical Society in Lincoln legal papers. He’s the author of three books, including The Republican Vision of John Tyler.

1:12 He is currently working on his fourth book on President James Polk and has contributed to BRI’s life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Dan, I want to thank you very much for joining us for this important topic related to William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas. I’m happy to be here with you, Tony.

1:32 Thanks for that glowing introduction. Sure. Well, it’s all of your accomplishments, so you should be recognized for them. So we’ll be looking at these documents, he’s contending, abolitionist visions of William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. And these primary sources can be found on our new resource, life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

1:58 Now, Dan, can you start us off by giving us a little brief historical introduction on abolitionism? And who exactly were William Lloyd Jersey and Frederick Douglas? I’d be happy to. I think it’s important to note that the abolition movement as a kind

2:19 of radical social movement really takes off after 1830. Prior to 1830, in response to the ideals embodied in the American revolution, there were manumission laws that have been passed in southern states. The process of freeing the slaves is really kind of a genteel thing where individual slave owners

2:40 who felt a pang of conscience might free the slaves. People like George Washington, for example, freed his slaves on his will at his death. But it was not some big social movement. But in 1830, I think, fired in part by the revivalist evangelical nature of the Second Great Awakening becomes or the movement to abolishes slaves, becomes a kind of social cause.

3:03 And we annoyed garrison’s life really epitomizes that. Garrison is born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 18 eight. He grows up in stark poverty. His father was a sailing master who, shootily, moved his family to a newborn port from Canada right before the Embargo Act kicked in and then was thrown on the beach and

3:27 couldn’t earn a living and actually deserted his family and just disappeared. And so Garrison grew up in stark poverty and eventually was apprenticed to a printer. And from there his career grew, and during the course of his apprenticeship, he became, I think in part imbued

3:48 with the evangelical fervor of the second Great Awakening and seized on first temperance and then abolition is a cause kind of life’s work, if you will. We know that he began in this regard in Baltimore, working on an abolition newspaper with Benjamin Lundy, but was jailed for his criticism of slaveholders

4:11 in Baltimore and refused to pay a fine to get out of jail and so spent some time in prison or imprisoned until he was freed by cause. Another abolitionist paid his fine. Then he goes back to Massachusetts and starts the Liberator. It’s famed abolition newspaper in Boston in 1831. And it’s in the Liberator that Garrison expounds his uncompromising version

4:35 of abolitionism that emphasized no union with slaveholders. That the constitution was, as we see in the documents today, was a kind of covenant of death, that slavery could only be ended by a kind of unceasing moral argument that violence couldn’t be tolerated, that pacifism should rule,

4:59 and that essentially any kind of political activity was illegitimate, that you couldn’t get involved in politics because of necessity. Politics involves the compromise accepting half a loaf when you want a whole loaf. And Garrison said that’s morally impossible when dealing with an evil institution like slavery. I think it’s also important to emphasize

5:19 that Garrison’s language was intensely harsh. As you know, Tony, if you looked at Garrison’s words, he condemned slaveholding in the stark language and anyone who he viewed as complicit in slave owning or in slavery in language that was equally fierce.

5:42 For example, when Daniel Webster supported the Compromise of 1850, Garrison calls him a lick spittle, and he referred to slaveholders as vampires sucking the blood of the nation. And that language could be problematic at times. In other words, on the one hand,

6:02 Garrison said in stark moral terms why slavery was a bad thing, which was good. I mean, people had to recognize that slavery was not. It was, in fact, a very evil institution that was antithetical to American principles. On the other hand, it did spark a certain amount of outrage simply because of the harshness of his language.

6:23 Lots of people at the time have marked on that, contemporaries and people since. As for Douglas, of course, Douglas is born in a slave in Maryland, grows up on the Y plantation, which was run by an overseer who also owned Douglas.

6:43 His name was Anthony, and he was probably Douglas’s father. Douglas did not know who his father was, but it was probably this overseer, Aaron Antony. And as a slave then, Douglas experiences all of the worst that slavery had to offer. I mean, he saw other slaves being beaten, sexually abused.

7:05 He himself was beaten. He worked on plantations, he worked in the city. He was in Baltimore for a time where he worked on the docks and had to turn over his wages to his owner so, in many respects, Douglas life as a slave is a kind of microcosm of slavery as it exists in the south.

7:27 I mean, he experienced perhaps not everything, but pretty close to everything. With his late good experience, he determines to become free. He has a kind of dramatic example or incidence of resistance against the so called slavebreaker that he had been sent to because of his defiant attitude, a man named Edward Covey.

7:49 Douglas actually fights him, and at which point Covey kind of leaves him alone. And Douglas says in his narrative of his life that this was the moment when I determined that I would be free, that I had kind of stood up for myself and survived. And so he escapes to the north in 1838. He disguises himself as a sailor and manages with forged papers to get

8:13 to the north, where he works, or settles in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1839. He listens to Garrison give a rather dramatic Garrison was, of course, a wonderful lecture, too, as well. He listens to Garrison give this lecture and is fired with his own view that he,

8:34 too, has a great desire to participate in the abolition movement. In 1841, Douglas famously gives an address in Tucker with Garrison in the audience. And Garrison says, we got to get this guy. We got to get this guy around the United States, because Douglas would tell Douglas, as you know, Tony, Douglas is a very imposing presence.

8:55 He had a baritone voice. He was 6 six foot four, and he was, by all accounts, just a naturally gifted speaker. So Garrison enlists him in the cause, and Douglas becomes a great abolitionist, lecturer, and office career goes and perhaps I should stop there. Oh, that’s okay, because the two work together, right?

9:18 Yeah. And I think that there’s some tension of all because Douglas wants to be his own man. Garrison seems to be restricting Douglas to just talking about his own experience rather than actually commenting on the evils of slavery. And Douglas sort of broke free of that,

9:40 became his own speaker, started his own newspaper, the North Star, and also breaks, as we’ll see in a lot of the political philosophy from Garrison, breaks with his ends and means of how to go about achieving abolitionism. That’s right. I think Douglas was very influenced by Garrett Smith.

10:04 And Garrett Smith’s view was that, in fact, the Constitution was an anti slavery document. It was not a kind of covenant with hell, the way Garrison described it. Yeah. And I agree with you, too, as well, that I think Douglas wanted to be his own person, and Garrison really was someone who felt that these are the principles of the abolition movement.

10:27 You must swear fealty to them, and if you do not apox upon you, you will be assailed by an assaulting. Editorial had rid out of the movement and Douglas to his credit. After all, Douglas life story lends itself

10:47 to resistance to having others dictate your course. And so in the end, I think he came to his own conclusions. He was tired of telling the same old story about his life in front of another group and wanted to have put his own philosophical and permit or out there. And so that leads to kind of inexorable conflict with Garrison.

11:09 Right? Well, why don’t we go ahead and dive into that? Yeah, exactly right. Let’s dive into the documents here to give Garrison his due. As you said, he really hones in on the Declaration of Independence and the principles contain their end rather than the Constitution, which he calls a covenant death.

11:32 And you can see this right on this slide, right? He talks a lot about the rights of man, talks about human freedom and equality. There again down at the bottom, he talks about the rights of man are inherent, unalienable and so really elevates the principles of the Declaration

11:54 and then finishes in that last line let the American Union perish. Let these allied states be torn with faction or drenched in blood. Right. And he just doesn’t care much about the Union. Right. He’s willing to let it go. No union with slaveholders, as he pointed out.

12:17 And again here in this slide, he’s talking about justice, he’s talking about delivering the oppressed, vindicating the brotherhood of man. And so again elevates kind of those natural rights principles and yet talks about the Union and the Constitution being conceived in sin here and brought forth an iniquity it’s a career marked by unparalleled

12:42 hypocrisy, by high handed tyranny and a bold defiance of God. So I think there is a principled stand here but for the Declaration, not the Constitution and some pretty uncompromising language. Do you see that as well? Yeah, absolutely.

13:02 I mean, this is vintage Garrison. He always embraced the decoration because, of course, the second paragraph of the Declaration, which is with its natural rights doctrine is perfectly consistent with his views of abolition and why slavery was fundamentally untenable. It was inconsistent with the doctrines or the great natural rights language

13:28 of the decorations, therefore, should be done away with. But you can also see his intense, uncompromising attitude. It just has to be said. I think this is an element of the Second Great Awakening in Garrison. That is to say, you can’t compromise with evil. If something is evil, it has to be done away with.

13:50 And any kind of half measures make you complicit with evil. It’s something that made it very difficult, I think culturally and politically for Garrison, for the abolition movement to move beyond its kind of narrow membership because, for example, in the south, obviously there’s no room for compromise here.

14:12 I mean, Garrison denounced gradualism any kind of colonization, any kind of half measures that might allow slavery to persist for a time was simply unacceptable to Garrison. In a lot of ways. The difference between Garrison and Douglas, I think, comes down to the difference between

14:34 the radical desire to be kind of morally perfect to the point of burning down every institution, as opposed to the reformers desire to work within the system and recognize that the system has strengths that you can use to achieve desired ends.

14:54 Right. So his means his ends are perhaps correct, at least in terms of equal rights for all and the enjoyment of natural rights. But it really strikes me that if you’re going to talk about certain civic virtues like prudence and moderation and how that leads to political

15:18 compromise, I think it’s fair to say Garrison is sorely lacking in a Lincolnian or Douglas like prudence. No, that’s right. And I’m glad you mentioned Lincoln because Lincoln, in his temperance address, I always use the analogy that

15:40 Lincoln’s approach to the problem of alcoholism in the period which was a terrible problem, the problem of addiction. I’m sorry if this seems like I’m drifting away from the topic, but it’s relevant. His approach to the problem of addiction was let’s embrace the addict. Let’s not condemn them. And in the same fashion, Lincoln approaches slavery.

16:01 Well, it’s an evil. He always said it was morally wrong, but let’s not necessarily condemn the evildoer. Let’s embrace them and see if we can work out some kind of a path to do away this evil. Well, as you suggest, Tony, that’s prudence. That’s an emphasis on social order and working within norms in the system.

16:23 It’s the reformers agenda, whereas the Garrisonian agenda is the more radical agenda. To say this is a terrible thing and anything complicit with it should be burnt to the ground. As you know, in 1854, it publicly burns a copy of the Constitution and then when it turns to ash, throws it up to the crowd and steps on it.

16:47 And you see here in this passage just pulled up, he finds there’s nothing virtuous in the Constitution at all. Yeah. And so he really takes the view, agreeing with others such as Roger Tawney, as Stephen Douglas and John Calhoun and others,

17:10 that the Constitution was a pro-slavery constitution. Can you explain that a little bit? That’s a good point. And it was something that contemporaries are marked upon to kind. Tweet. Garrison. In other words, when Garrison has this fierce critique of the Constitution that you see in front of you now, where he points out that, well,

17:32 the slave trade clause makes the country complicit with allowing the slave trade to exist, 30 clause allows extra representation for slave owners. All of this suggests that the Constitution kind of sanctions slavery and is complicit with this evil. And at the time that Garrison is making this point, or within the antebellum time

17:56 frame, southerners say, I don’t really like Garrison, but by the way, he makes pretty good argument our favor for the Constitution really sanctions slavery. I think it’s James Henry Hammond or someone, one of these slaveholders who tells Calhoun we had to take this Garrison talk on how the Constitution is

18:17 a slaveholding document and snip out the abolition parts and use the good parts. So that’s a big issue that differentiates Garrison from Lincoln, from Douglas, of course, and from others who strongly disagree that the Constitution is anyway complicit or even sanctions slavery.

18:42 And again, I think it’s the difference between the radical and the reformer. I think Garrison is the radical that finds no virtue at all in anything associated or maybe in any way, in his view, complicit with slavery versus the reformer who sees virtue there. Right and so we see on this slide, he’s calling it that covenant without death, the agreement with Hell.

19:05 He says the American Union is a stupendous imposter and the watchword of every uncompromising avalanche of every friend of God and liberty must be, both in a religious and political sense, no union with slaveholders. And I just wonder if he’s willing to just let the Union go if

19:25 he’s not engaging in politics, just let the Southerners leave with their slaves. What practical power, what moral persuasion, what political pressure could then abolitionists or those who even just opposed, who are opposed to slavery, what pressure could they bring to bear?

19:48 Then it strikes me that the Garrisonian solution in this sort of moral purity, in creating sort of a union that’s just absolutely committed to all of its principles, with no compromise, would that allow slavery to endure in an even greater way in the south.

20:09 What do you think of that? Well, here’s what I would say. I think the abolition movement and Garrison’s rhetoric sparks a kind of counter reaction to the in the south that in effect doom slavery. That is to say, the Southern reaction to the abolition movement is to violate the Bill of Rights.

20:30 It’s to burn abolitionists literature. It’s to drive people of antislavery sentiments from the pulpit or from professorships and universities. It’s to prohibit talking about abolitionism or anti slavery. The argument anyway in newspapers. And that reaction actually is more concerning to people in the north than

20:56 the perceived and harshness of Garrison’s rhetoric. In other words, people in the north are kind of vaguely anti slavery. In the 1830s and 1840s, but then they look at the Southern reaction to it and think, good heavens, if the Bill of Rights can be violated in South Carolina, we’re in Charleston where the sheriff

21:17 inspected the mail and took out abolitionist literature and piled it in the center of the town square and burned it up. Well, if they can do that in Charleston and there’s no sanction and the federal government in the Jackson administration does nothing, what’s to keep the sheriff from Springfield, Illinois for doing the same? I’m very concerned about that.

21:37 I’m less concerned about the slavery from a humanitarian perspective. But if I’m a scratch farmer in Illinois, I’m very concerned about the fact that maybe the Bill of Rights can be violated with impunity and there’s no consequence. And I don’t know that Garrison necessarily intended this that the Southern reaction would prompt concern in the north.

21:59 But that’s precisely what happened, I think, in the north. If you look at Northern antebellum newspapers, you see a lot of concern. And this is also expressed on the floor of Congress by John Quincy Adams and others. What’s going on in the south. This counter action to Garrison is very concerning because it violates the Bill of Rights. Very interesting.

22:20 Well, we have another very important document that I would love to dive into it’s Frederick Douglas. And what to the slave is the 4th of July. And this is given in 1852 about almost eight years before the start of the Civil War. And it’s a very interesting document.

22:42 And then something I want to point out already is that as he’s talking about this great celebration of the 4 July of our independence, of the Declaration of Independence, of all those ideals, and he celebrates them. But as you can see in this very first paragraph, he says it’s your political freedom.

23:04 It’s your nation’s destiny. It’s your national independence. Right. Because African Americans are not included. And we’ll see more of that in other slides as he uses this rhetorical device throughout the speech. But he says something very interesting here, too. I have said that the Declaration

23:25 of Independence is the wringle to the chain of your nation’s destiny. So indeed, I regard it the principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. So on one hand, he seems to be elevating these principles as true principles, as immutable principles of human nature

23:46 and of natural rights and of self government and yes, saying, well, but there’s a large group of people who are not enjoying those rights. And so it’s really sort of the white man’s holiday. Oh, that’s right. And I think that what Douglas, to me,

24:08 Douglas, you put your finger right on it, Tony. Douglas embraces and celebrates the Declaration of Independence. I’ve always thought that this line where he calls the principles in the decoration saving principles is one of the great lines in Douglas career. It’s Douglas central message. Really.

24:29 What he’s saying here is we need to go back to first principles. Our principles are sound, but the application is unsound. We’re not living up to these things. And this is where Douglas breaks with, I think, Garrison in some sense, although Garrison says we’re not living up to them as well.

24:50 But Garrison sees the country not saveable essentially, he’s kind of given up, I think. Douglas does not douglas has an unshakeable faith in American principles and the American nation to live up to those principles.

25:10 It’s not doing so now. He’s saying in 1852, but it’s very possible, and he believes, I think, that it will. Douglas message is on first glance, I think people might say, well, this is really gloomy, but actually it’s quite hopeful. All he’s doing is saying, look,

25:32 and by the way, I think this is very similar to what Lincoln is saying in the Peoria speech and elsewhere. Douglas says, by the way, our principles are sound, but we have to live up to them. And until we do, I can’t celebrate the 4th of July in the manner that you do. And Lincoln says the same thing.

25:53 Lincoln in the Peoria speech, look, we’re in danger if we allow slavery to grow, of becoming something that we are not, that we never intended to be. We’re not living up to first principles. We have to restrict it and put it on a course of ultimate extinction. And he continues in that vein, right on this side, he says, the rich inheritance,

26:16 he calls it a rich inheritance of justice, of liberty, prosperity, independence decreed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. So again, alluding to these principles as true principles, but I’m not sharing them, and I should be. And he goes on, the sunlight that brought

26:37 life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. Whipping and death. This 4th of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn. Right. It’s pretty hard headache, right? He’s calling out America. He’s calling out Americans. He’s taking Americans to task to live out their principles.

27:01 And he goes on to say what to the American slaves? Your answer a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham. Your boasted liberty and unholy license, your national greatness swelling vanity.

27:23 Your sounds are rejoicing, are empty and heartless. Your denunciation of tyrants brass confronted and impudence. Your shouts of liberty and equality hollow mockery. Your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings mere bombast, broad, deception, impiety and hypocrisy.

27:47 So dan hardhitting rhetoric, right? He’s not really pulling any punches. And yet, unlike Garrison, he’s not attacking the principles, he’s not attacking the documents, he’s not attacking the union, merely the inability of the American regime of Americans to live up to those principles.

28:09 Oh, that’s exactly right. And it has to be said that this was Douglas abolitionist argument. He would go before audiences and say, here’s what I endured as a slave, and this is why. These are examples of slavery’s, injustices and abuses and bad things.

28:33 So here you have on the 4 July, essentially him making that case again, saying, look, we’re tolerating an institution that because if we’re really a natural rights principles we can’t tolerate, we can’t allow it. We can’t permit it for all the reasons that he’s listed here. And it renders the great Republican experiment in which I think Douglas would

28:56 say, collectively, we’re all engaged in hypocritical. Right? What I think is so interesting in comparing and contrasting these two documents is he says that the Constitution,

29:19 much unlike Garrison, he calls it a glorious liberty document. Right? I mean, what a beautiful way to phrase it. And he says that he basically calls the Constitution an antislavery document. So the radical abolitionist Garrison calling it a proslavery document, and yet the former slave

29:43 who’s become an abolitionist is calling it an antislavery Constitution. Can you explain his thinking about the antislavery Constitution? So Douglas is believed I think he’s drawing on Garrett Smith and Lysander Spooner and others who are making this argument in the 1840s.

30:04 And Douglas, being convinced by Douglas, felt that the Constitution, properly construed, really does not embrace slavery. And by the way, Sean Wallenz has written a very fine book on this that makes the same case. It just came out recently. And he noted, just like Douglas noticed, that nowhere in the document is the term slave or slaveholding used.

30:25 And Wallenz’s argument as modern scholar is that the Constitution in fact, does not recognize property in men, and that the founders at the convention were adamant in avoiding that. That is to say, the founders did not intend for the Constitution to embrace slavery. They were forced to make some concessions, Lincoln calls them,

30:48 refers to it as kind of in Broadway as the doctrine of necessity. Out of necessity, the founders had to deal with slavery because it existed, and it was necessary to make some contestants to it for the sake of unity. But beyond that, they would not go and did not intend to go because they wanted the course the slavery would put on the course of ultimate extinction. Douglas comes to the same conclusion and believes that very strongly.

31:11 And so Douglas argument is and it’s not specifically detailed here in the 4th of July speech, but basically he says, look, if you look at various elements of the Constitution, like the privileges and immunities clause or the Fifth Amendment, they clearly are antithetical to slavery, or the Preamble,

31:35 which says, this document is designed to secure the blessings of liberty to all. Well, in other words, Douglas takes this and sees the Constitution in a very constructive way, as he says here’s a glorious liberty document. And the larger point is, or the next logical point would be

31:56 it’s perfectly defensible to work within the political system, to try to reform it, to eliminate slavery by electing Congressmen, by electing senators, by electing governors, by getting involved in. The political process, which is something that Garrison issued. Right. He said, don’t participate in politics. Right.

32:16 But Douglas is working within the constitutional framework of citizenship and consent and wants to lend his voice to anti slavery. So we end on this note. As you said, Douglas is very hopeful. He says, I do not despair this country.

32:39 And he says, I’m leaving off where I began, with hope. Right? And he says, while drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. So I’ll give you the last word on Douglas’s hopefulness.

33:01 I think it’s one of the most wonderful things about Douglas and about reading Douglas. Is that when you consider Douglas’s life story. The privations that he endured. The abuse. And yet he emerges from this and recognizes that the principles of the United States are sound ones and are antithetical to tyranny. Antithetical to slavery.

33:23 And that the country was inevitably tending in the direction of eliminating slavery. Which it does. That is to say, Douglas saw hope even in the darkest hours of the abolition movement, when it seemed as though that slavery was going to be this kind of permanent institution. And he was right. His hope was not misplaced.

33:43 And the country does embrace the anti slavery cause, in fact, fights a franticidal civil war, a terribly bloody civil war to end the institution. So I think Douglas was right. I think Douglas recognizes that the principles of the Declaration, or as he said, saving principles, and inevitably the tyranny

34:08 and the oppression of slavery were doomed by them. Dr. Dan Monroe, thank you for being a friend to BRI. Thank you for enlightening us and sharing us your expertise on these documents and on the historical period in general. And just thank you for joining me. It’s been a pleasure to be with you. Tony, thank you for inviting me.

34:30 Of our viewers can view these documents and dozens of others at Bill of Rights Institute.org and just look for the new textbook, life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Thank you.