Posted on 07/04/2023 5:18:29 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
While Frederick Douglass is obviously not a Founding Father, his life embodied our nation’s highest ideals, and his speeches were delivered to promote these values. And on this day — the day we commemorate the inception of our nation with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 — Douglass is one man that deserves to be associated with the Fourth of July.
Born a slave in 1818 in Maryland with the given name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, Douglass was a strong-willed and intelligent man who, in spite of the laws at the time, learned to read and write.
In 1838, he escaped and eventually made his way to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he labored and was a lay preacher. Later, he became involved in the abolitionist movement, where he met William Lloyd Garrison, who took Douglass under his wing for a time.
As Douglass’s orator skills grew, so did his fame. However, Douglass and Garrison did not see eye to eye on the issue of slavery, and eventually the two parted ways.
Douglass founded his own abolitionist newspaper called “The North Star” and would go on to become the major force in the movement to abolish slavery in America — even going so far as to meet with and advise Abraham Lincoln and help recruit black soldiers for the Union army.
His earlier views were obviously denunciatory of slavery and the nation that hypocritically allowed it at its founding and promoted it with the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. However, Douglass did not ultimately accept Garrison’s doctrine that the U.S. Constitution was an inherently pro-slavery document...
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
They actually did. This is from Anti-Federalist number 25. January, 1788.
Our great Lords and Masters are to lay taxes, raise and support armies, provide a navy, and may appropriate money for two years, call forth the militia to execute their laws, suppress insurrections, and the President is to have the command of the militia. Now, my countrymen, I would ask you, why are all these things directed and put into their power? Why, I conceive, they are to keep you in a good humor; and if you should, at any time, think you are imposed upon by Congress and your great Lords and Masters, and refuse or delay to pay your taxes, or do anything that they shall think proper to order you to do, they can, and I have not a doubt but they will, send the militia of Pennsylvania, Boston, or any other state or place, to cut your throats, ravage and destroy your plantations, drive away your cattle and horses, abuse your wives, kill your infants, and ravish your daughters, and live in free quarters, until you get into a good humor, and pay all that they may think proper to ask of you, and you become good and faithful servants and slaves.
And this from anti-Federalist #29. December 1787.
The militia of Pennsylvania may be marched to New England or Virginia to quell an insurrection occasioned by the most galling oppression, and aided by the standing army, they will no doubt be successful in subduing their liberty and independency. But in so doing, although the magnanimity of their minds will be extinguished, yet the meaner passions of resentment and revenge will be increased, and these in turn will be the ready and obedient instruments of despotism to enslave the others; and that with an irritated vengeance. Thus may the militia be made the instruments of crushing the last efforts of expiring liberty, of riveting the chains of despotism on their fellow-citizens, and on one another. This power can be exercised not only without violating the Constitution, but in strict conformity with it; it is calculated for this express purpose, and will doubtless be executed accordingly.
They predicted exactly what was going to happen, even to the point of naming Pennsylvania and Massachusetts as the source of those Federal troops which would kill and destroy people to enact the diktats of Washington DC.
It seemingly united the Congress in passing the Corwin Amendment.
Apparently the Northern Republicans could unite around the issue of permanent slavery in the United States.
You know I record these things into audio at Librivox so they get a wider audience. So you should have already heard it by now, I've shown it to you more than once. That and I linked to it here as well to the other user - it was a raw-looking URL even. Meaning, you had to avoid clicking and avoid listening to it in order to hear it. How did you miss it?
"The American Constitution and the Slave - Is the Constitution pro-slavery or anti-slavery?"
"Both."
It's not. The 1619 Project is wrong. You trust progressives too much. Not really sure why you trust progressives, but there it is.
DL:That sounds interesting. I will have to look that up."
I can save you both time here. Fitzhugh wrote that in his book "Sociology for the South: or, The failure of free society".
It's on pages 244-246. https://books.google.com/books?id=HjJLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA244
I have absolutely no recollection of you ever showing me Frederick Douglas' argument regarding Article IV, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.
But since you seem to be familiar with it, can you give me the gist of his argument that a requirement to return fugitive slaves to their masters is somehow anti-slavery?
It sure sounds pro-slavery to me.
It's not. The 1619 Project is wrong. You trust progressives too much.
Trusting progressives has nothing to do with it.
The US Constitution allowed Congress to ban the import of slaves in 1808, which they promptly did. I regard that clause as anti-slavery.
The US Constitution also requires fugitive slaves to be returned to their masters. (Article IV, Section 2.) I regard that part as pro-slavery.
So we have an anti-slavery part and a pro-slavery part. Therefore I think it is quite reasonable to say "both", and I have no idea what liberals are saying because I don't listen to them.
It's on pages 244-246. https://books.google.com/books?id=HjJLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA244
Well thank you for that. I have just finished reading the pages you identified. According to the cover, this was written in 1854, and if that is correct, I am surprised at the usage of the word "Communist." I didn't think that became a commonly used word until Marx wrote his Das Kapital.
I can somewhat see his point that slavery could be viewed as a form of socialism, but it doesn't feel quite right. I will have to ponder it before I can put my finger on exactly what is wrong with his assertion.
Probably more accurate to say "socialism is a form of slavery."
I was discussing slavery, and the Founders’ perhaps too optimistic expectations of its end.
Do you suppose Patrick Henry himself, who would have died for liberty and ‘abhorred’ slavery, thought it would take more than two hundred years to end it and all of its vestiges? Did he think it should just carry on until people in the States decided on their own to abolish it, despite the abomination of it?
In the 1780s, everyone thought slavery would slowly die out. Then in 1793, a Massachusetts inventor named Eli Whitney turned cotton into a highly profitable commodity.
Suddenly a declining institution was a growing institution because cotton cultivation and harvesting required a labor intensive work force.
Money often drives morality. People tend to see anything that makes them money as "moral."
Do you suppose Patrick Henry himself, who would have died for liberty and ‘abhorred’ slavery, thought it would take more than two hundred years to end it and all of its vestiges?
I'm not sure that I should put Patrick Henry's opinion at the time above that of the voters who seemingly chose slavery.
Did he think it should just carry on until people in the States decided on their own to abolish it, despite the abomination of it?
I'm not sure what he thought or whether it should have a greater say than other people's opinions of the time, but I think most thought it would slowly wane until it was gone, just as it had done previously in other states. It would just take longer in the South because there was real profitability to be made from slavery in the South, unlike in the cooler climates of the North.
But I don't think the Civil War was really about slavery. The evidence for this is the passage of the Corwin Amendment, which would have kept slavery legal in the United States indefinitely.
If they wanted to fight a war about slavery, why would Congress try to amend the constitution to keep it legal?
The Civil War was about the fact the Southern states (who were paying 72% of all the taxes) were leaving and taking their money with them.
The Southern economic production was something around 750 million dollars per year, and much of that money ended up in the North. 200 million of that was trade with Europe in 1860.
The South's leaving would not only deprive Northern industries of cheaper costs for Southern products, it would have caused all the Northern port cities to lower their tariffs down to 13% like the Southern states had done with their port cities. (They even said they would do that in newspaper articles from that time.)
The Federal Government was not at all amused at this prospect.
"Slavery" is the red herring of the war. The US government was perfectly fine with slavery continuing indefinitely, but they weren't going to tolerate states leaving and taking all that money out of their control.
I’m hardly cowardly
You’re just virtue signaling over race
I’ve never liked that here
It’s weak
It’s always been like this here
They decry political correctness even as they do it
I mean if we must pick a black American
Booker T Washington
Clarence Thomas
Just off the top of my head are better picks from folks who purport to be conservative
I mean that black fella killed at Boston massacre gave his life for the then fledgling revolution
Buffalo soldiers rescuing white women and children who’d been kidnapped by Comanches and so on in the Indian wars
It happened a lot because they could spare them or all was available especially in the hot years of reconstruction when Indians took advantage with so many federal occupying Dixie
All better choices if one simply can’t resist
You’re just sniping at people who were minding their own business because you’re an overgrown juvenile delinquent.
How many manhole covers did you throw off highway overpasses in the middle of the night as a kid?
Ask any black in this country if they would agree to go back to Africa. If they would rather stay here then they should APPRECIATE THE 4TH OF JULY!
My point was not about "any black man in this country". It was in reference to how a 18th or 19th century "slave" would think/feel about Independence Day. Would you expect a slave to celebrate the Independence of a nation where he held a slave?
“I mean that black fella killed at Boston massacre gave his life for the then fledgling revolution”
Crispus Attucks. Probably half Indian half black. Attucks is an Indian word for deer.
Future President John Adams defended the British soldiers who fired on the “Boston Massacre” crowd.
Adams argued that the colonials in this affair were an armed rowdy mob who wanted to fight.
” Would you expect a slave to celebrate the Independence of a nation where he held a slave?”
Sounds like what William Lloyd Garrison and Karl Marx both were saying at the time.
Garrison famously burned copies of the Constitution at abolitionist rallies.
Marx wrote for the Whig/Republican Party flagship newspaper for a decade. Of all the writers of the time he sounds the most like today’s moralizers who consider pre Lincoln America to be evil.
You are forgetting about the THOUSANDS of blacks who were slave owners. They must have been happy to be here away from tribal warfare.
I knew it must have been you who posted this.
Here is the text of what I put into audio, which is of course easier to search. Basically, he says people are lying when they refer to it as the fugitive slave clause. He cites in response James Madison's Notes - that huge telephone book-sized volume of what is in a lot of ways a CSPAN transcript of the Constitutional Convention. Douglass clearly read Madison's notes.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_American_Constitution_and_the_Slave
Douglass said: (with some truncation) "But there is one other provision, called the “Fugitive Slave Provision.” It is called so by those who wish it to subserve the interest of slavery... knowing as I do the facts in the case, that I am utterly amazed, utterly amazed at the downright UNTRUTH which that very simple, plain statement really conveys to you about the transaction ... a proposition for the return of fugitive slaves to their masters precisely as criminals are returned. And what happened? Mr. Thompson-Oh! I beg pardon for calling his name - tells you that after a debate it was withdrawn, and the proposition as it stands in the constitution was adopted. He does not tell you what was the nature of the debate. Not one word of it. No; it would not have suited his purpose to have done that."
Douglass: "Very well, what happened? The proposition was met by a storm of opposition in the convention: members rose up in all directions, saying that they had no more business to catch slaves for their masters than they had to catch horses for their owners - that they would not undertake any such thing, and the convention instructed a committee to alter that provision and the word "servitude," so that it might apply NOT to slaves, but to free-men — to persons bound to serve and labour, and not to slaves."
I think it's clear that Douglass means that the clause means not "only" slaves but any kind of labor including - yes - slaves.
I didn't read it all in this moment but I think Douglass is making the point that it's actually the fugitive laborer clause.
"The US Constitution also requires fugitive slaves to be returned to their masters."
Citing Douglass, a simple plain reading of the Constitution itself on its face proves that, well, it does not say that. You're deriving an interpretation and nothing more of ghost words not anywhere found.
No matter what, I think both you and I can agree on this fact: The word slave does not appear there or anywhere. If we really wanted to get deep into the thick of it, we could cite Madison's Notes and explain in detail why it doesn't, since those do exist in writing.
I agree. But I do also give the same leniency on the other side when reading some of the stretches that Thomas Woods does with the facts (and even moreso his omissions) on Lincoln. There's plenty to go around, as you talked about a few posts up regarding the CSA nationalizing some industries.
At the end of the day the bottom line just comes down to this. The Civil War isn't nearly all that interesting.
He says they are lying? Is this some form of "Who ya gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"
Article IV, Section 2 is clearly about fugitive slaves.
"Very well, what happened? The proposition was met by a storm of opposition in the convention: members rose up in all directions, saying that they had no more business to catch slaves for their masters than they had to catch horses for their owners - that they would not undertake any such thing, and the convention instructed a committee to alter that provision and the word "servitude," so that it might apply NOT to slaves, but to free-men — to persons bound to serve and labour, and not to slaves."
So they objected to the word slave? We knew that. You can tell by how it is written that they went to a little effort to avoid mentioning the reality of what they were passing.
I think it's clear that Douglass means that the clause means not "only" slaves but any kind of labor including - yes - slaves.
A teeny tiny sliver of the numbers of people "bound to service." I assume this means "indentured servants", but by far, the dominant meaning was slaves.
I didn't read it all in this moment but I think Douglass is making the point that it's actually the fugitive laborer clause.
With the vast majority of these fugitive "laborers" being slaves.
No matter what, I think both you and I can agree on this fact: The word slave does not appear there or anywhere.
It also doesn't appear in the section where congress can ban the import of slaves in 1808, but that is precisely what they are talking about.
They used euphemisms, probably because they just didn't want the word "slave" put into the constitution. They did the same thing when the wrote the Corwin Amendment. It is totally and completely about slaves, but they didn't use the word "slave."
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