## 1. Slavery



In his narratives, speeches, and articles leading up to the U.S. Civil
War, Douglass vigorously argued against slavery. He sought to
demonstrate that it was cruel, unnatural, ungodly, immoral, and
unjust. Douglass laid out his arguments, first in his speeches while
allied with William Lloyd Garrison's American Anti-Slavery
Society, and then in his first autobiography, the *Narrative*.
As the U.S. Civil War drew closer, he expanded his arguments in many
speeches, editorials, and his second autobiography, *My Bondage and
My
 Freedom.*[7]



His definition of slavery identified its immorality and injustice by
pinpointing its core wrong in the brutalization and the literal
commodification of another human being and the stripping of them of
their natural rights:



> 
> 
> Slavery in the United States is the granting of that power by which on
> man exercises and enforces a right of property in the body and soul of
> another. The condition of a slave is simply that of the *brute
> beast*. He is a piece of property--a *marketable
> commodity* in the language of the law, to be bought and sold at
> the will and caprice of the master who claims him to be his property;
> he is spoken of, thought of, and treated as property. His own good,
> his conscience, his intellect, his affections are all set aside by the
> master. The will and the wishes of the master are the law of the
> slave. He is as much a piece of property as a horse. (1846 [SFD: 23];
> my
>  emphasis)[8]
> 
> 
> 



In his own words, he worked to pour out "scorching irony"
to expose the evil of slavery (1852 [SFD: 71]). His rebellion against
slavery began, as he recounted, while he was enslaved. In his
narratives, the depiction of his early recognition and general
recognition among blacks and some whites of the injustice,
unnaturalness, and cruelty of slavery was a significant element of his
argument. It marks his first argument against slavery. Some of the
apologists for slavery claimed that blacks were beasts, subhuman, or
at least a degenerated form of the human species, drawing on a racial
ideology that went back to at least the fifteenth century and that was
common in the British American Colonies and then the United
 States.[9]
 Thomas Jefferson, for example, infamously intimates this racist view
in his *Notes on the State of Virginia* (1785: Query 14).
Against such racist ideology, Douglass argued that blacks were human,
rational, and capable of the full range of human emotions and
sensitivity. He mocked slavery's apologists for their
hypocrisies and contradictions when they claimed otherwise. In
"The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro", he is derisive
of the idea that he would even need to argue this point (1852 [SFD:
 55-92]).[10]



Against the claim that blacks were beasts, he argued that instead,
slavery had brutalized them. He pointed to the obviousness of
blacks' humanity and mocked the hypocrisy of slavery's
apologists. He rhetorically asked: Why should there be special laws
prohibiting the free actions of blacks, such as rebelling against
slave masters, or any other white person, if slaves were merely
bestial and incapable of independent, responsible behavior? Indeed,
why had slave masters encouraged their slaves' Christianization
and then forbade their religious gatherings? Along with this
hypocrisy, American slaveholders feared and banned the education of
blacks while demanding and profiting from their learning and
development in the skilled trades. Thus, Douglass argued the
accusation that blacks were beasts was predicated on the guilty
knowledge that they were humans. Additionally, it subverted not only
the natural goodness of blacks by brutalizing them, but it also did so
to white slaveholders and those otherwise innocent whites affected by
this wicked institution. Slavery, Douglass pointed out, consistent
with Jefferson's anxieties in Query 18 of the *Notes on the
State of Virginia* (1785), was a poison in the body of the
republic.



Second, since blacks were humans, Douglass argued they were entitled
to the natural rights that natural law mandated
 (SS2
 and
 SS3)
 and that the United States recognized in the Declaration of
Independence and Constitution
 (SS4).
 Slavery subverted the natural rights of blacks by subjugating and
brutalizing them: taking men and turning them, against God's
will and nature, into beasts. Third, as an affront to natural law,
slavery contradicted God's laws and corresponding moral duties
to others. As a witness and participant of the second Great Awakening,
he took the politicized rhetoric of Christian
redemption--personal and social liberation from
sin--seriously. Douglass viewed redemption as intrinsically
wrapped up with freedom from slavery and national liberation like
other abolitionists. Fourth, he argued that slavery was inconsistent
with the idea of America, with its national narrative and highest
ideals, and not just with its founding documents. Fifth, drawing on
theories of providential historical development (echoing common
American views of manifest destiny), he argued that slavery was
inconsistent with moral, political, economic, and social progress.
Insofar as it propagated and protected slave power, America was on the
wrong side of history on the question of slavery.



The apologists of slavery drew on the same ideological vein of
historical progress to offer the defense that slavery was a benevolent
and paternal system for the mutual benefit of whites and blacks.
Douglass countered that calumny by drawing on his experiences, and the
experiences of other enslaved black Americans, that American slavery
was in no way benevolent. It brutalized black people. Slavery
subjected them to debilitating, murderous violence, sexual violence
and exploitation, split up families, denied them education, exploited
their labor, and denied their natural property rights. Slavery, as
Douglass's relentlessly argued, was a deep and enduring
injustice and evil. Enslaved black people were not happy slaves
benefiting from the largess of kind, gentile white masters. Neither
were they lacking in agency, self-esteem, self-respect, or a sense of
dignity. They were moral beings, fully aware of the rights and
capabilities they were unjustly deprived of. As Douglass proclaimed to
the nation and world, black Americans wanted freedom, independence,
the recognition of their full personhood, moral equality, and their
rights as U.S. citizens (McGary and Lawson,
 1992).[11]


## 2. Natural Law



The ideas that Douglass drew on in his arguments against slavery
originate from natural law theory and Christian theology. Douglass was
an Enlightenment thinker, a nineteenth-century modernist, and a
Protestant, so natural law in his view was a combination of the
prescriptions of *reason* and *revelation* evident in
the historical and civilizational progress of humanity. One of his
clearest articulations of this combined view is from a 1853 speech,
"The Present Condition And Future Prospects of the Negro
People" (1853b [FDSW: 250-259]), where condemns
declares,



> 
> 
> Slavery has no means within itself of perpetuation or permanence. It
> is a huge lie. It is of the Devil, and it will go to its place. It is
> against nature, against progress, against improvement, and against the
> Government of God. It cannot stand. It has an enemy in every bar of
> railroad iron, in every electric wire, in every improvement in
> navigation, in the growing intercourse of nations, in cheap postage,
> in the relaxation of tariffs, in common schools, in the progress of
> education, the spread of knowledge, in the steam engine, and in the
> World's Fair...and in everything that will be exhibited
> there. (1853b [FDSW:
>  259])[12]
> 
> 
> 



The sources for his *driving* belief in natural law and its
moral implications were many: the founding documents of the United
States; popular intellectuals, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and his
colleagues and acquaintances in the American Abolition movement; the
allies he encountered abroad; and his appreciation of George
Combe's *The Constitution of Man*, from 1834 (Van Wyhe
2004). However, given the numerous religious references in his
speeches and writings, a primary source for his employment of the idea
of natural law was his adaptation of the American Protestantism of the
Second Great Awakening, with its democratic and republican values and
generally independent spirit. All of this is on prominent display at
the conclusion of his famous speech, "The Meaning of July Fourth
for the Negro":



> 
> 
> The arm of the Lord is not shortened", and the doom of slavery
> is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. 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. (1852
> [SFD: 90])
> 
> 
> 



Relying on the *deus ex machina* was not enough for Douglass.
His vision of natural rights involved action; his image of civic
republicanism emphasized the need for active participation to claim or
earn one's rights and status as a citizen (Davis 1971; Pettit
1997; Myers 2008; Gooding-Williams 2009). As Douglass scathingly
pointed out, the slave-holding states resisted the abolition of
slavery, and many Americans were apathetic about its cruel
injustices--humans resist providential justice. Therefore, he
argued, the end of slavery required agitation, protest, and, if
needed, military intervention.



Douglass longed for God to cast his thunderbolts of judgment at
American slave power, but he knew that human action was needed to
abolish slavery in America (Blight 1989: 26-58). His view of, if
you will, *enacted providence* is on full display at the end of
his famous Fourth of July speech of 1852, where he cited Psalm 68:31
and paired the idea of God's fiat with the image of Africa and
Asia rising:



> 
> 
> The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet.
> The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat
> of the Almighty, "Let there be Light", has not yet spent
> its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice,
> can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and
> crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa
> must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. "Ethiopia shall
> stretch out her hand unto God". (1852 [SFD:
>  91])[13]
> 
> 
> 



There are many possible concerns about Douglass's view of
natural law, manifest destiny, and providence, which we can discern
from a careful reading of the passage above; they involve a belief in
historical teleological development and the human costs of that
assumption. These costs include affirming nineteenth-century
conceptions of civilizational backwardness of non-European societies
or peoples. Thus, he is relatively silent about the United
States' destructive actions against indigenous peoples.



This aspect of Douglass's views led Wilson Jeremiah Moses to
characterize him and other early black political figures as
"Moses" figures: exodus leaders, recipients of natural law
for a chosen people. The chosen people, in this case, are African
Americans in their travail for freedom, as well as the American
Republic as a whole. Douglass--twinned eternally with Abraham
Lincoln--is a lawgiver in the American civil religion (Moses
1978). This monumental, world-historical *vita* aside,
Douglass's faith in progress, although tested to its breaking
point, resulted in his putting too much belief in the inevitability of
progress. Nonetheless, his faith had a moral, social, and political
purpose. He had no time for political pessimism, which is either a
narcotizing sentiment for those who have surrendered to despair or a
performative luxury whose decadence only those secure in their liberty
can afford.


## 3. On Liberty



Instead of surrendering to despair, he joined the abolition movement
after escaping slavery. And for that grand purpose, natural law and
rights were ideas he believed in and used to significant effect. Thus,
in his writings, his writings he repeatedly makes clear and direct
references to concepts that flow from liberalism: liberty; moral and
social equality; individuality; property rights, self-defense, and
speech; the moral and instrumental value of labor; democracy; and
composite (what we would call multiethnic or multiracial) nationality.
This is why he is rightly associated with liberalism (Myers 2008;
Buccola 2012). The relation between Douglass's works and those
ideas is apparent; however, three merit highlighting because they are
not typically emphasized in the theoretical literature about Douglass:
free speech, property, and composite nationality.



Douglass's life after abolition speaks to the importance of the
freedoms of speech, thought, and opinion and the great value he placed
on them. From his efforts to learn how to read and write to his desire
to start his own newspaper, his attitude and actions aggressively
asserted the indivisible links between equal liberty and the right to
think and speak one's mind. Like the name of his first
newspaper, this value was his *North Star*. So, on 9 December
1860, in response to the violent disruption of a meeting he was
participating in, Douglass directly addressed the matter in his
speech, "A Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston", wherein
he delivered a classic liberal defense of it that still resonates:



> 
> 
> There can be no right where any man however, lifted up or humble,
> however young or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to
> suppress his honest sentiments. (1860c [FDP1 v.3: 423])
> 
> 
> 



The silencing of speech squashes thought, opinion, and discussion, and
doing so, as Douglass pointed out--consistent with other
philosophers on liberty--commits a "double wrong. It
violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker
 (Ibid.).[14]



On property, Douglass argues, as expected, against human bondage.
That, however, was not the only thing he had to say about it. The
positive right to property, the right of black Americans to their
bodies, the labor of their bodies, and the wealth generated from their
productivity are ideas that feature prominently throughout the
narratives. Douglass wrote movingly about the productivity of his
labor, the exploitation of it by his enslavers and those in their
employ, the theft of his rightfully earned wages, and the anger of
some white laborers who resented having to work and compete with free
black workers. The right to self-ownership, labor, and property were
not just mere things denied to him--they were expressions,
products, and symbols of his liberty and liberty in general. In the
*Narrative*, for example, on the theft of his wages by Hugh
Auld, his master's brother, Douglass wrote,



> 
> 
> I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day.
> I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully
> my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to
> deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because
> he earned it,--not because he had any hand in earning
> it,--not because I owed it to him, nor because he possessed the
> slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power
> to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon
> the high seas is exactly the same. (FDAB: 84)
> 
> 
> 



From the Civil War through Reconstruction and its betrayal, Douglass
continued to see the right to property as a necessary part of genuine
emancipation. He wrote and frequently spoke about the ennobling,
moral, and economic power of labor, private property, and individual
productivity in articles before emancipation like, "What Shall
be Done with the Slave if Emancipated" from 1862 (FDSW:
470-473) to speeches like "Self-Made Men" from 1893
(SFD: 414-453).



On composite nationality, or what we would call multiethnic democracy,
Douglass's "Our Composite Nationality" from 1869a
(SFD: 278-303) is a ringing endorsement of a robust vision of
civic belonging and national identification. It is an outlook that
reflects his support for organic processes of assimilation and
amalgamation and social reform. More on that below
 (SSSS6-8
 and
 SS12).



Just as he drew on liberal ideas, he repeatedly invoked ideas of
American civic republicanism and advocated for democratic reform,
action, and, eventually, universal suffrage
 (SS11).
 This democratic advocacy has led some philosophers to view Douglass
as a civic republican as much as he was a liberal (Gooding-Williams
2009). The evidence for that connection naturally arises from the wide
variety of his democratic associational activity. It is modeled in his
narratives, particularly in *My Bondage and My Freedom*, in its
depictions of social organization, action, solidarity, friendship, and
affection among black men and women (FDAB: 305-306).



Whether we understand Douglass as a liberal or civic republican (or
even as a type of black nationalist or black radical liberal), the
values and ideas he drew on were the foundation of his fierce
denunciations of and active resistance to American slavery and his
interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.


## 4. The U.S. Constitution



In 1851 Douglass broke from William Lloyd Garrison's position
that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document and that the
free states should peacefully secede from the Union. In a letter to
Gerrit Smith, he reported that he was "sick and tired of arguing
on the slaveholder's side..." (21 January 1851 [FDSW:
171-173]). So, he decided to break with Garrison and side with
Smith and the Liberty party's position that the United
States' founding documents were anti-slavery (Blight 1989:
26-58; Root 2020).



In his famous speech on the topic, "What To the Slave Is The
Fourth of July?" (1852 [SFD: 55-92]), he detailed his
signature positions on the U.S. Constitution: that slavery is contrary
to natural law, that blacks are self-evidently human and entitled to
natural rights, and that slavery is inconsistent with the
Constitution, American Republicanism, and Christian doctrine, and that
it should be
 forcefully--violently--resisted.[15]
 A principal example of this shift is the changes in his second
autobiography, *My Bondage and My Freedom* (1855, FDAB);
particularly relevant is the extra and weighty meaning he imparts to
the famous scene of his fight with the slave breaker Covey
 (SS5).



Douglass acknowledged that initially, he accepted the view, promoted
by William Lloyd Garrison and allies aligned with him, that the
framers intended to allow slavery to continue in the slave states and
that the Constitution was thereby consistent with the institution of
slavery. However, the Garrisonian view of the Constitution resulted in
passivity in the face of the Slave-holding states' threat of
succession. That position did not sit well with Douglass because he
wanted a more aggressive stance and strategy for abolishing slavery
and the emancipation of the enslaved, including in the southern
slave-holding states. Plus, he became convinced of the natural law
reading of the U.S. Constitution that foregrounded the values outlined
in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. What convinced him were the
arguments of Gerrit Smith, Lysander Spooner, William Goddell, and
Samuel E. Sewall that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document
and that the founders were at cross-purposes on the question of
slavery. Douglass argued that the general ideas of America's
founding documents supported an interpretation of the U.S.
Constitution as an evolving document in tune with the development of
civilization. Thus, he intoned the call, "let there be
light", to capture his hope for abolition, emancipation, and
universal political and social progress (1852 [SFD: 91]).



Douglass's view of the Constitution is one of the reasons why he
is associated with the assimilationist (or what is better understood
as the integrationist tradition) tradition in African American
political thought. It sets him up for the criticism that he did not
squarely recognize the racialized character of the nation, how deeply
embedded race and racism were in its institutions, and that it was in
many respects a racial
 state.[16]
 Douglass, however, was not blithe to the nation's sins--he
repeatedly and forcefully condemned them through the end of his life
 (SS12).
 His reading of the Constitution was reasonable, grounded in his
affirmation of natural law theory, and it was an essential part of the
history of abolition (Sinha 2016; Delbanco 2018).


## 5. Violence and Self-Defense



Douglass remained active in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil
War. He advocated for the abolition of slavery, worked against the
expansion of slavery into new U.S. territories, and vigorously
protested the Dred Scott decision and related laws that protected the
property rights of slaveholders over slaves who escaped to the Free
States in the North.



He was a member of the Liberty party, was involved in other political
parties, including the Radical and Free Soil parties, and eventually
became involved with the Republican party--all for the sake of
abolition and the support of equal citizenship for all Americans
(Blight 1989 and 2018). Douglass even met the militant abolitionist,
John Brown. Although Douglass declined to join Brown's
militia--he sensed the deadly potential of Brown's zealotry
and the likelihood of its failure--he defended Brown's
ideals and denounced claims that Brown was merely mad. Although
Douglass distanced himself from Brown's plans and destructive
actions, he appropriated Brown as a symbol of righteous violence
against the national sin of slavery and used the raid at
Harper's Ferry to criticize President Lincoln's reluctance
to support abolitionism (1859 [FDSW: 372-376]; 1860b [FDSW:
417-421]; Myers 2008: 63-73; Blight 1989:
95-100).



Douglass's rejection of pacifism and his support for Federal
military intervention to end slavery was a significant turning point
in his thought about natural law, divine providence and manifest
destiny, and constitutional interpretation. Douglass's defense
of *jus ad Bellum* greatly affected his contemporaries and the
resulting debate on slavery, struggle, and self-respect. The modern
debate over violence and self-respect in African American philosophy,
critical race theory, and black political theory begins with
Douglass's narratives, particularly his famous fight with the
"Negro breaker", Edward Covey. This incident plays a
significant role in all of Douglass's narratives: Covey
represents the brutalizing institution of American slavery, and
Douglass's fight and victory represent the assertion of manhood,
self-respect, dignity, and freedom. However, Douglass's time
with Covey and the suffering he endured by Covey's hand is given
a lengthier description in *My Bondage and My Freedom* than in
the *Narrative*. In the former, the depiction of the fight
explicitly draws parallels between Douglass's battle with Covey
and the struggles of black Americans against slavery and racial
degradation.



Additionally, his fight has explicit national political connotations
(Gooding-Williams 2009; Myers 2008). The scene's depiction in
each autobiography is powerful and indicates its narrative brilliance
(literary, rhetorical, and philosophical), so it deserves to be quoted
at length. In the *Narrative* (1845), Douglass wrote:



> 
> 
> The battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a
> slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived
> within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed
> self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be
> free. The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full
> compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself. He
> only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has
> himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never
> felt before. It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery,
> to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice
> departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that,
> however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed
> forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it
> be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in
> whipping, must also succeed in killing me. (FDAB: 65)
> 
> 
> 



In *My Bondage and My Freedom* (1855), he gives the following
expanded interpretation:



> 
> 
> Well, my dear reader, this battle with Mr. Covey,--undignified as
> it was, and as I fear my narration of it is--was the turning
> point in my *"life as a slave".* It rekindled in my
> breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore
> dreams, and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being
> after that fight. I was *nothing* before; I WAS A MAN NOW. It
> recalled to life my crushed self-respect and my self-confidence, and
> inspired me with a renewed determination to be a FREEMAN. A man,
> without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human
> nature is so constituted, that it cannot *honor* a helpless
> man, although it can *pity* him; and even this it cannot do
> long, if the signs of power do not arise. (FDAB: 286, original
> emphases)
> 
> 
> 



The first passage displays Douglass's romantic and religious
influences; it swells with the longing for the freedom of the soul.
The second passage, written without the demands of Garrison's
pacifist politics directing his pen, screams independence and force.
It recommends violence--it advocates for the coming U.S. Civil
War--to throw off tyranny and claim, defend, and even fulfill
one's honor and humanity.


## 6. Respect and Dignity



The fight with Covey has inspired several philosophical
interpretations of Douglass's intentions and the meaning of his
struggle. It is commonly read as an exemplar of the conception of the
state of war within liberal political theory (Davis 1971) and the
interpersonal, or generally relational, dynamics of respect and
 recognition.[17]
 In particular, Bernard Boxill (1997 and 1998) developed an
exceptionally influential deontological account of Douglass's
fight as emblematic of the individual sense of self-respect of oneself
as a moral
 being.[18]
 That self-recognition comes with the obligation to defend one's
self-respect and to expect respect from others, which implies that
others should *recognize* one's inherent dignity. For
Douglass, that fight was a parable--like Jacob's wrestling
with an angel (Genesis 32:24-32
 [KJV]),[19]
 except in this case, the antagonist was more demonic than
angelic--about the American and black American fight against
slavery and racism.



What is more, Douglass's evocation of dignity in his narrative
of the fight is intellectually and emotionally stunning. "A man,
without force", he intensely asserted, "is without the
essential dignity of humanity". He adds to that the claim
that



> 
> 
> [h]uman nature is so constituted, that it cannot *honor* a
> helpless man, although it can *pity* him; and even this it
> cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise. (FDAB, 286,
> original emphases)
> 
> 
> 



The moral weightiness of the idea of dignity and his use of it invites
us to consider whether it plays a special role in his thought and its
relation to his frequently repeated arguments and assertions of the
humanity and equal moral personhood of black people. Most of his
mentions of dignity in his speeches and writings primarily refer to it
as an ordinary sense of respectful comportment and propriety.
Nonetheless, everyday assertions of dignity, even passive ones, have
morally serious implications for individuals, groups, and societies
under conditions of absolute domination, such as faced by black
Americans during slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Assertions of
everyday dignity could often be met with severe and sometimes violent
consequences under those conditions--a fact that Douglass
highlighted and condemned throughout his life. When Douglass referred
to moral personhood as such (the essential moral worth of persons), he
typically used the ideas of "equality", "perfect
human equality", "manhood",
"brotherhood", and "universal human
brotherhood".



There are, however, moments, as noted in the passage above from *My
Bondage and My Freedom*, where his usage of "dignity"
explicitly points to the idea of equal moral personhood.



The same is true in an editorial he wrote in 1850 responding to
slander, verbal assaults, and a physical one:



> 
> 
> My crime is, that I have assumed to be a man, *entitled to all the
> rights, privileges and dignity, which belong to human
> nature*--that color is no crime, and that all men are
> brother. *I have acted on this presumption*. The very
> "head and front of my offending hath this extent--no
> more". I have not merely talked of *human brotherhood and
> human equality, but* have reduced that talk to practice. This I
> have done in broad open day, scorning concealment. I have walked
> through the streets of New York, in company with white persons, not as
> a menial, but as an equal. (1850 [FDSW: 157]; my emphases)
> 
> 
> 



As discussed in the previous sections on slavery, natural law,
liberty, the U.S. Constitution, and self-defense, Douglass vigorously
defended equal personhood and thus the moral equality of black people.
On that basis, he condemned slavery as an affront to natural law,
Christianity, and republicanism. Therefore, regardless of the
frequency he referred to the term "dignity", he does get
at the idea, and it does play a central role (along with and
*defined through* the constellation of other ideas he drew on)
in his political philosophical thought. Perhaps then, a basic account
of dignity, as indicative of individual moral worth, is all that is
needed to understand Douglass's view. Stopping with that,
however, would impart a sense of passivity to it. Douglass's
view was not simply static.



Dignity, for Douglass, is a natural and innate thing, bequeathed to
all humans as humans. It is static or changeless in that limited
sense. At the same time, Douglass suggests that willful action,
epitomized by self-defense, was a condition of what was otherwise an
inherent and essential quality of being a human person. It is
something to be
 practiced.[20]
 But if dignity is innate and inherent, why must an individual
practice it for it to be said that they have it? If it is an essential
quality, then its practice or expression cannot be a condition of its
possession. Douglass is not equivocating on this point. An
individual's equal moral status comes with the obligation to
inhabit, abide by, and defend that
 status.[21]
 This is how we should understand Douglass's view of dignity as
modeled by his open-air rejection of servility and assertion of
equality.



All the same, Douglass does not, nor could he, consistently hold that
every enslaved black person needed to have an equivalent "fight
with Covey" moment and assertion of "manhood" to
secure their dignity and natural right to be treated as a moral equal.
Directly related to this concern is the continuing discussion of
whether the depiction of the fight with Covey and its meaning and
value promote a masculinist vision of anti-slavery resistance,
liberty, and autonomy (Wallace 2009 and 2014; Alfaro 2018). Douglass
did not think that the attitudes and actions of the enslaved
conditioned the immorality of slavery and the imperative of
emancipation, so what counts as resistance to indignities of injustice
requires careful and charitable consideration that is attentive to the
constraints of individual circumstances and social conditions.



The bravado in Douglass's wonderful affront to racism aside, his
vision of self-respect, dignity, and the obligation to defend oneself
and one's dignity is central to his legacy. It plays a vital
role in the history of African American political theory, and for that
reason, given this nation's history, it is a valuable
contribution to American political philosophy about respect, dignity,
and personhood. Its implications are profound, as can be seen in his
view of universal human brotherhood.


## 7. Universal Human Brotherhood



Douglass's conception of providence, with its American themes of
individualism, anti-supernaturalism, and activism, and his view of
natural law influenced his understanding of universal human
brotherhood (Sundstrom 2003 and 2008: 11-35). He believed that
the idea of universal human brotherhood was consistent with the high
ideals of American Republicanism and Christianity. It was a doctrine
dearly held by Douglass, and he offered it as a response to the rise
in the United States of Samuel Morton's (1799-1851) racial
theory of *polygenesis*, that Josiah Nott and George
Gliddon's *Types of Mankind* (1854) popularized (Martin
1984; Myers 2008).



Douglass put considerable effort into countering arguments that blacks
were subhuman, intellectually and morally inferior, and fit to be
dominated as children, forever to be a race in nonage. To counter
these claims, he turned to his natural law arguments. He argued that
by the standards of Christian theology, blacks, as humans and
creations of the divine, were all equally the children of God, no
matter their present condition. One of his slogans, drawn directly
from the title of a poem by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, got to the
point: "A man's a man for a' that"
 (1795).[22]
 Douglass argued that the Christian Bible had to be correct on this
score, that the authority of the biblical text relied on the
affirmation of the unity of the human family:



> 
> 
> What, after all, if they are able to show very good reasons for
> believing the Negro to have been created precisely as we find him on
> the Gold Coast--along the Senegal and the Niger--I say, what
> of all this?--"*A man's a man for a'
> that*". I sincerely believe, that the weight of the argument
> is in favor of the unity of origin of the human race, or
> species--that the arguments on the other side are partial,
> superficial, utterly subversive of the happiness of man, and insulting
> to the wisdom of God. Yet, what if we grant they are not so? What, if
> we grant that the case, on our part, is not made out? Does it follow,
> that the Negro should be held in contempt? Does it follow, that to
> enslave and imbrue him is either *just* or *wise*? I
> think not. Human rights stand upon a common basis; and by all the
> reason that they are supported, maintained and defended, for one
> variety of the human family, they are supported, maintained and
> defended for *all* the human family; because all mankind have
> the same wants, arising out of a common nature. A diverse origin does
> not disprove a common nature, nor does it disprove a united destiny.
> (1854 [SFD: 147] [FDP1 v.2: 523])
> 
> 
> 



He emphasized that not only was slavery against natural law and
Christian morality but that the very arguments concerning the subhuman
status of blacks that slavery's apologists used to justify
attempted slavery contradicted the Bible and were heretical. Douglass,
in short, leveraged the Bible and America's reverence for it
against the rising tide of polygenesis race theory. He stated:



> 
> 
> The unity of the human race--the brotherhood of man--the
> reciprocal duties of all to each, and of each to all, are too plainly
> taught in the Bible to admit of cavil.--The credit of the Bible
> is at stake--and if it be too much to say, that it must stand or
> fall, by the decision of this question, *it is* proper to say,
> that the value of that sacred Book--as a record of the early
> history of mankind--must be materially affected, by the decision
> of the question. (1854 [SFD: 126] [FDP1 v.2: 505])
> 
> 
> 



The doctrine of universal human brotherhood for Douglass, and the
abolitionists, was based on the Bible's creation story and Acts
17:26 [KJV]: "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for
to dwell on all the face of the earth".



These words were not mere words for Douglass and the abolitionists;
they were not just-so stories. The Christian doctrine of the unity of
the human family or human brotherhood contained the world-historical
insight of equal human dignity, which implied--unleashed, as seen
in several revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries--an uncompromising demand for moral equality and equal
liberty.


## 8. Amalgamation and Assimilation



Douglass's affirmation of universal human brotherhood, his
belief in providential human development, and his observation of the
mixing of racialized groups in the United States led him to directly
support racial amalgamation: race-mixing was a sign of progress for
Frederick Douglass. It is important to note here that he thought there
were races to amalgamate, so he affirmed the basic idea that
biologically distinct races existed (1854 [SFD: 116-150]). As
his view of universal human brotherhood should be clear, he did not
think much followed from that admission. The existence of biological
races did not, in his view, negate the theological-philosophical
insight of universal human brotherhood.



Douglass understood that the sexual boundaries between the races were
thin and that, indeed, the conditions of slavery led to a great deal
of mixing. Recall that he maintained that his unacknowledged father
was his white master, and, in no uncertain terms, he condemned the
rape, sexual violence, and exploitation of black women. Yet, given his
commitment to his ideals, Douglass promoted amalgamation between free
peoples. He believed that blacks and white ought to be free to
intermarry and that they should do so. Why should they marry?
Douglass, sensing the transformation of the black and Native American
population in the United States, believed this process was a natural
and continual process; that a new third race, an American race, would
emerge in this land. During his time, such views were highly
inflammatory and served, and continued to serve, as a reason against
the emancipation of enslaved black people and later as a justification
for segregation (Sundstrom 2008: 11-35). Nonetheless, in the
1860s, he boldly advocated for amalgamation between the races. He
remarked to a journalist, the day after his second marriage to Helen
Pitts, who was white,



> 
> 
> ...there is no division of races. God Almighty made but one race.
> I adopt the theory that in time the varieties of races will be blended
> into one. Let us look back when the black and the white people were
> distinct in this country. In two hundred and fifty years there has
> grown up a million of intermediate. And this will continue. You may
> say that Frederick Douglass considers himself a member of the one race
> which exists. (1884 [FDP1 v.5: 147])
> 
> 
> 



Douglass's amalgamation is easy to confuse with his support for
assimilation. Amalgamation is conceptually distinct from assimilation;
one does not have to accept amalgamation to support assimilation.
Assimilation concerns various degrees of acculturation. It can
theoretically go in either direction, from black to white or white to
black, and it can involve the subtle blending of both and many groups
(Sundstrom 2008). His support for amalgamation and assimilation could
not be any clearer than what he proclaimed in "On Composite
Nationality", in which he called for the *molding* of all
in the land into a common Americanness (1869a [SFD: 278-303];
 SS12).
 In his enthusiasm for this molding, he is distinct, but he was not
exceptional in his support of assimilation; several of his
contemporaries and leaders who followed him supported some degree of
assimilation. Even some of Douglass's early critics, such as
Edward Blyden (1832-1912), Martin Delany (1812-1885), and
Alexander Crummell (1819-1898), who did not support
amalgamation, still believed in the assimilation of black Americans to
the standards and values Western civilization (Moses 1978).


## 9. Integration versus Emigration



Douglas advocated assimilation and amalgamation, so, understandably,
he supported the right of black Americans to remain in the United
States and thought they ought to do so. Rather than leave the country
to find homes and start lives abroad in places that they imagined
might provide friendlier quarters, Douglass urged black Americans to
stay and support abolition efforts and then, in the postbellum years,
to fight for equal rights and citizenship. He can be considered a
primary example of the political ideal of racial integration as
distinct from racial separatism. Douglass's
amalgamation-assimilationist views of the 1860s are not the
desegregationist and integrationist ideas associated with the U.S.
Civil Rights movement that began around the mid-1950s. Other thinkers
and movements influenced those views, which advocated for equal
rights, protection, citizenship, and equal access to schools, colleges
and universities, and neighborhoods. Yet, Douglass is a fitting icon
for the American integrationist impulse.



In his essay from 1848, "The Folly of Racially Exclusive
Organization", Douglass criticized the creation of separate
societies, with distinct "negro pews, negro berths in
steamboats, negro cars, Sabbath or week-day schools or
churches", and in other social spaces and institutions (FDP1
v.2: 110-111). Formal racial segregation and informal separatism
generally served the interests of the defenders of slavery; thus,
after the U.S. Civil War, Douglass regarded ongoing racial separatism
as a counter to the ideals of the abolition movement. It was a message
he frequently repeated (1848a [FDSW: 117-122]).



He opposed plans for black American emigration to Africa, the
Caribbean, Mexico, or Latin America for similar reasons. He criticized
the emigrationist visions of the American Colonization Society,
founded by whites, and the African Civilization Society, founded by
blacks. He had four reasons to oppose emigration schemes: First, for
slavery to end, Douglass argued that black Americans needed to
struggle against it in America. Second, Americans had no other home
but the United States; they were uniquely American and products of
American history. Third, black Americans had a right to the property
their labor had produced. By abandoning the United States, they would
leave the land they had built. In his 1894 speech, "Lessons of
the Hour" (SFD: 454-497), he wrote,



> 
> 
> The native land of the American Negro in America. His bones, his
> muscles, his sinews, are all American. His ancestors for two hundred
> and seventy years have lived and laboured and died, on American soil,
> and millions of his posterity have inherited Caucasian blood. It is
> competent, therefore, to ask, in view of this admixture, as well as in
> view of other facts, where the people of this mixed-race are to go,
> for their ancestors are white and black, and it will be difficult to
> find their native land anywhere outside of the United States. (1894
> [SFD: 485]).
> 
> 
> 



Fourth, according to Douglass, emigration and separation were contrary
to historical development and the emergence of a composite nation
comprised of a blended people. All the same, Douglass was not opposed
to blacks collectively acting in self-help and self-defense.
Nonetheless, his opposition to emigration displayed a downside of his
commitment to his natural law and manifest destiny-inspired
principles. He did not appreciate enough how immigration might be more
than a reasonable act of self-preservation and
self-determination--in the face of anti-black life-crushing
oppression and murderous violence--much like his own escape from
 slavery.[23]
 Initially, Douglass even opposed the internal migration of black
Americans from the southern states to the northern ones (Myers 2008).
However, he moderated his position nearer the end of his life (1879
[FDP1 v.4: 510-533]; 357 [FDP1 v.5: 357-373]); 1894 [SFD:
454-497]).


## 10. Leadership



Douglass was a leader among the Americans involved in the abolition
movement, and after the Civil War, although unelected into any office,
he remained a leading voice for black
 Americans.[24]
 Garrison presented Douglass as a victim of and witness to slavery and
as a spokesperson for Garrisonian abolitionism, but he freed himself
from their restraints, just as he freed himself from slavery. To speak
for himself, be his own man, and be a leader among men. That is what
Douglass wanted. Thus, he shaped his own story, insisted on speaking
his mind free from the control of handlers like Garrison, and strove
to represent the interests of black Americans.



His example of leadership was quick to be seized and claimed by other
prospective black leaders and spokespersons. The most significant
example of this was the conflicting claim between W.E.B. Du Bois and
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) over Douglass's legacy.
Both men competed for the opportunity to publish a biography of
Douglass with the publishers George W. Jacobs & Company in their
series *The American Crisis Biographies* (Sundstrom 2008:
11-35). The press rejected Du Bois's bid for this task in
favor of Washington's (1907) and granted Du Bois the project of
writing a biography of John Brown instead--but he included within
it an extensive discussion on Douglass (Du Bois 1909).



After the death of Douglass, Du Bois penned an unpublished
elegiac poem, "The Passing of Douglass" (Du Bois 1999:
ix), and he incorporated elements of Douglass's narrative in
*The Souls of Black Folk* (1903 [1999: xxii]), *John
Brown* (1909), and *Black Reconstruction in America* (1935
[2021]). Du Bois presented Douglass as a self-assertive freedom
fighter and a leader of an activist community that demanded full
social and political liberty, equality, and inclusion. Du Bois's
Douglass was not an accommodationist: He was not the sort of black
leader who paid obeisance to white leaders and consented to an
oppressive status quo, all for a token pittance or
self-aggrandizement. Du Bois made this pointed interpretation very
clear in his *The Souls of Black Folks*. In the third chapter
("Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others") of
*Souls*, Du Bois argues against Booker T. Washington's
accommodationism in favor of his and Douglass's demand for, and
assertion of, black political and social equality and rights. Economic
liberty is not enough, and any gains in the economic sphere would be
hampered and vulnerable without the protections and opportunities
provided by social and political liberty and rights. And, of course,
economic considerations aside, the fight for equal rights and liberty
is not solely about economic opportunity--it is about equal
dignity and one's full humanity.



However, it is essential to note that Du Bois took on Douglass's
mantle of leadership after he argued against Douglass's view of
assimilation and amalgamation. In "The Conservation of
Races", Du Bois rejected amalgamation, which Douglass supported,
and advocated for conserving a distinct black identity and community
(1897 [1992]). Here is his critical reduction of the amalgamation
position:



> 
> 
> It may, however, be objected here that the situation of our race in
> America renders this attitude impossible; that our sole hope of
> salvation lies in our being able to lose our race identity in the
> commingled blood of the nation; and that nay other course would merely
> increase the friction of races which we call race prejudice, and
> against which we have so long and so earnestly fought. (Du Bois 1897
> [1992: 488])
> 
> 
> 



Du Bois, in opposition to amalgamation, argued that black Americans
ought to embrace a "stalwart originality" that follows
"Negro Ideals" and not dissolve into a general American
identity (Ibid.). It is a view associated with cultural pluralism that
expresses an early version of black cultural nationalism. And as such,
it is a historical conceptual landmark in debates in African social
and political thought over racial separation versus assimilation and
the conservation of race (Boxill 1992a: 173-85; 1992b; 1999;
McGary 1999a; 1999b: 43-61; Pittman
 1999).[25]



Because of his cultural pluralism, it is tempting to think that Du
Bois rejected Douglass's view of assimilation and integration,
but that would be a mistake. He turned away from Douglass's
vision of total assimilation in favor of retaining some black ideals,
which he too quickly assumed that all blacks qua blacks share. Still,
his cultural pluralism has at its end the creation of a community that
is a "co-worker" in the "kingdom of culture"
(Du Bois 1903 [1999: 11]). What results from Du Bois's rejection
of amalgamation and acceptance of some elements of assimilation is the
brilliant idea of double consciousness, especially the double
consciousness brought on by the black American experience. As is
evident from the rhetorical questions at the end of the following
passage, Du Bois argued against Douglass's hopes of amalgamation
and presaged his view of black political, social, and cultural
solidarity:



> 
> 
> No Negro who has given earnest thought to the situation of his people
> in America has failed, at some time in life, to find himself at these
> cross-roads; has failed to ask himself at some time: What, after all,
> am I? Am I an American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my
> duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American? If
> I strive as a Negro, am I not perpetuating the very cleft that
> threatens and separates Black and White America? Is not my only
> possible aim the subduction of all that is Negro in me to the
> American? Does my black blood place upon me any more obligation to
> assert my nationality than German, or Irish or Italian blood would?
> (Du Bois 1897 [1992: 488])
> 
> 
> 



Du Bois's answers to these questions directly contradict
Douglass's view about amalgamation. However, their opinions
about assimilation share similarities, such as the co-production and
enjoyment of a shared American culture. In the end, however, Du
Bois's image of Douglass is skewed toward his political projects
of elite leadership, racial solidarity, and uplift.



Likewise, Booker T. Washington's Douglass is equally a work of
art that reflects the artist's image. His *The Life of
Frederick Douglass* (1907) presents a picture of Douglass contrary
to Du Bois's and is incompatible with many of Douglass's
views. It is, in part, a work of self-promotion. Although Washington
accurately pointed out the similarities between Douglass and himself,
he failed to mention Douglass's assertions of equal personhood,
his uncompromising demands for equal social and political rights, and
that Douglass fully expected that black Americans would fully
integrate into a "composite nation". Washington's
claim over Douglass's legacy of leadership falls short of the
facts. Douglass was a radical Republican and demanded full inclusion
of black Americans in the nation's life and the opening of all
opportunities for education and advancement for blacks, and Washington
did not.



Du Bois's claims over Douglass, however, also fall short.
Despite Du Bois's assumption that he had inherited the mantle of
black political, social, and (he would add) cultural leadership from
Douglass, Douglass's leadership style and politics were markedly
more democratic than Du Bois's. Although Douglass likely saw
himself as an instance of what Ralph Waldo Emerson called a
"representative man" (Emerson 1850 [2004]) and as a
self-made man to boot (1893 [SFD: 414-453]; 1860d [FDP1 v.3:
289-300]), he did not envision himself as the embodiment of the
spirit or culture of his people Gooding-Williams 2009:
19-65).



Douglass's political activities provide a model of democratic
politics in action (Gooding-Williams 2009). He worked with various
groups, some underground, while he was enslaved. For example,
unbeknownst to his master, he participated in at least one Sabbath
School and helped other slaves learn to read and write. And, of
course, he worked with several other black and racially integrated
advocacy groups after his escape and emancipation. These groups had
cross-cutting interests that he had to navigate. He pushed them to
reach a consensus on different issues, such as in his work with the
American Equal Rights Association, an organization devoted to
universal suffrage. So, he did not pose as a singular spokesman for
movements, groups, or his race, although he never shied away from
pushing or arguing his opinions and promoting democratic action (1848
[FDSW: 117-122]).



Indeed, his liberal and civic republican ideas influenced his thoughts
about leadership and his vision of the work and role of
"heroes" and so-called "representative men"
(1883b [SFD: 374-400]; 1893 [SFD: 414-453]; 1860d [FDP1
v.3: 289-300]). For Douglass, they were invaluable in their
stance against tyranny and defense of equal rights and liberty. On
John Brown, for example, Douglass wrote, putting him into heroic terms
(with overtones of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson),



> 
> 
> He believes the Declaration of Independence to be true, and the Bible
> to be a guide to human conduct, and acting upon the doctrines of both,
> he threw himself against the serried ranks of American oppression, and
> translated into heroic deeds the love of liberty and hatred of
> tyrants, with which he was inspired from both these forces acting upon
> his philanthropic and heroic soul. (1859 [FDSW: 375])
> 
> 
> 



Thus, in his elegies to John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, we see the
value he places on Emersonian representative men and the ideal of the
statesman guided by liberal and civic republican principles (1859
[FDSW: 372-376]; 1860b [FDSW: 417-421]; 1876 [FDSW:
616-624]).


## 11. Women's Suffrage



After the Civil War, Douglass remained active in Republican Party. He
was a staunch supporter of uncompromising Reconstruction of the Union
and advocated for economic and education investment in free and
newly-freed black Americans. Douglass pressed for the expansion of and
guarantee of civil rights for blacks, particularly for the defense of
the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which the Supreme Court declared
unconstitutional in 1883 (1883a [FDSW: 685-693]). Additionally,
in keeping with his civil rights efforts and his view of natural
rights and the development of the United States into a just Republic,
he was an advocate, although a complicated one, of women's
suffrage (Douglass 1976). He joined other prominent leaders in the
abolition movement, such as Sojourner Truth, and emerging leaders in
the suffrage movement, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, in these efforts.



The American Equal Rights Association was the principal national
organization working on behalf of women's right to vote. At
least in rhetoric, it had a dual platform of racial and sexual
equality (DuBois 1978). Middle-class and wealthy white women primarily
led it, and Douglass supported its platform but clashed with its
leaders over conflicting interests and its latent racism. The tensions
within the American Equal Rights Association, and the suffrage
movement generally, erupted over the passing of the fifteenth
amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The fifteenth amendment franchised
all male citizens, although, as U.S. history so brutally revealed, it
did so in word but not in deed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony opposed the fifteenth amendment because they demanded that
black men and *all* women (particularly white women) should be
enfranchised simultaneously. Some within the suffrage movement based
their arguments for women's suffrage and against blacks'
enfranchisement on racist grounds. Although the white women who led
the association were abolitionists, they also, and not
inconsequentially, held that blacks, particularly black men, were
inferior to white women and neither as ready for nor deserving of the
vote as they were (Stanton 1868 [2000: 194-199] and 1869 [2000:
236-238]).



Douglass was sympathetic to the cause of the universal franchise;
however, he condemned arguments for women's suffrage that were
predicated on the supposed racial superiority of white women. He
roundly condemned Stanton's racist claims that black and
"Oriental" men, and by extension black and Asian
women--i.e., Stanton's nasty references to
"Sambo" and "Yung Tung"--were not as
deserving as white women (1869b [FDP1 v.4: 213-219]; Stanton
1868 [2000: 194-199]). Douglass did not want to delay the
franchise for black males to resolve the question of women's
right to vote. He believed it a practical matter to quickly get some
protections for black Americans while the fight for suffrage for black
and white women continued. Moreover, he argued it was imperative to
obtain some measure of blacks' political, legal, and social
rights to confront the rising level of horrific anti-black violence
sweeping the United States. Douglass firmly made this claim in his
speech at an American Equal Rights Association meeting in 1869:



> 
> 
> I must say that I do not see how any one can pretend that there is the
> same urgency in giving the ballot to women as to the negro. With us,
> the matter is a question of life and death. It is a matter of
> existence, at least in fifteen states of the Union. When women,
> because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York
> and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon
> lamp-posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their
> brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult
> and outrage at every turn; when they are in danger of having their
> homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed
> to enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot
> equal to our own. (1869b [FDP1 v.4: 216] [SFD: 271])
> 
> 
> 



When asked if this did not apply to black women, Douglass replied that
it did, but because they were black and not women (Ibid.). He did not
have ready answers, however, to concerns about how well black men,
including elite black men, represented and protected the rights and
interests of black women. Generations of black male leaders repeated
his shortsightedness, which black women leaders, like Anna Julia
Cooper (c. 1859-1964), criticized while also struggling against
the racism of first-wave feminism (Cooper 1998).


## 12. At the Dawn of Jim Crow



During and after the Reconstruction, Douglass remained deeply
concerned about the prospect that the U.S. would compromise on black
Americans' civil and human rights. He became increasingly
worried about the denial of black civil rights and the rising waves of
anti-black violence and criticized the growing practice of black
peonage in agriculture. And over time, his sympathy for black
individuals and families fleeing the American South grew. He did not
support internal mass migration as a policy because he judged it a
poor option for black labor since it did not address the institutional
problems that caused the flight: peonage and exploitation, unequal
justice, unrestrained violence, lack of resources and opportunities,
and in particular, education. For taking that position, Douglass
received a great deal of criticism for failing to support the
individual choices of black Americans who sought to flee the
inhospitable, degrading, and deadly conditions in the American South.
It compelled him to rethink his views on the question
 (SS9).



Related to the conditions causing the flight of black Americans from
the southern states, Douglass criticized the inequitable and unfair
treatment of blacks in state criminal justice systems, particularly
criticizing the Convict-Lease system (Davis 1999). And he joined with
Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) in raising the alarm over the
growing practice of anti-black lynching in the United States (Giddings
2008; Wells-Barnett et al. 2014). Douglass saw America's failure
to support civil rights and equal citizenship for black Americans as
indicative of its moral and political failure. He even went so far as
to provocatively claim that emancipation was a stupendous fraud (1888a
[FDSW: 712-724]).



Douglass's later-day activities are an essential part of his
record and life; indeed, they are a part of the evolving discussions
on various subjects in African American philosophy, political theory,
and critical theories in several disciplines. He was part of several
movements that helped to mold the nation; they took their confidence
in providential historical development in hand--as he did when he
first committed to seizing his liberty in his "soul's
complaint", an "apostrophe" to ships on the
Chesapeake Bay:



> 
> 
> You are loosed from your mooring, and are free; I am fast in my
> chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I
> sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged
> angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O
> that I were free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and
> under your protecting wing! Alas! Betwixt me and you, the turbid
> waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim!
> If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The
> glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the
> hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let
> me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave? (1845 [FDAB: 59])
> 
> 
> 



The historian David Blight called Douglass a prophet of freedom,
perfectly capturing Douglass's enduring appeal (2018). His
ideas, values, and rhetoric defending equal liberty continue to cry
out to us in celebration and defense of equality and liberty. There is
no better summation of all that he stood for than what he proclaimed
in 1869 at the end of "On Composite Nationality":



> 
> 
> If our action shall be in accordance with the principles of justice,
> liberty, and perfect human equality, no eloquence can adequately
> portray the greatness and grandeur of the Republic. We shall spread
> the network of our science and our civilization over all who seek
> their shelter, whether from Asia, Africa, or the Isles of the Sea. We
> shall mould them all, each after his kind, into Americans; Indian and
> Celt, negro and Saxon, Latin and Teuton, Mongolian and Caucasian, Jew
> and gentile, all shall bow to the same law, speak the same language,
> support the same government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the
> same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends. (1869 [SFD:
> 302-303])
> 
> 
> 



Those inspiring and challenging words stand as an invitation to us to
closely study Douglass's works and legacy and to achieve our
nation.