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Remember Frederick Douglass By Rizzuto Fri Aug 21, 2009 - In the 1850’s a Republican liberator began to rise to prominence. He was a giant of a man both physically and intellectually. He was raised in adverse circumstances that he would eventually rise above, whereas even the strongest of men might very well have been forgiven had they crumbled. When called upon, he served his country admirably in grave times, and broke racial barriers in this nation like no other man before him had. No, I’m not speaking of Abraham Lincoln although that description would be equally fitting for him; I speak of the great anti-slavery orator Fredrick Douglass. On July 5th of 1852, Douglass, who called himself a “black, dyed in the wool Republican”, addressed the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York. During his passionate speech, Douglass said, "Take the Constitution according to its plain reading. I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it." Douglass continued his Independence Day address by proclaiming that, "Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document." Imagine the seeming leap of faith that that statement must have taken for a black man who lived in a time in which members of his family were treated as property to view the Constitution as a becon of liberty. If the self educated scholar Douglass had stood in front of the crowd and torn the document to shreds, one could scarcely have blamed him. Even more shocking, Douglass praised the constitution according to its plain reading; or in other words, as it had been written. He spoke these words before America fought a Civil War to decide once and for all the issue of slavery; before the idea that Healthcare and Housing were “human rights”; and even before a single piece of Civil Rights legislation had passed though congress. Douglass did not complain about the lack of specifics in the constitution indicating what the government “must do on your behalf”, as Barack Obama famously did in a 2001 interview. Nor did he decry that it was a “charter of negative liberties” which Obama believes “represented the bias of the founders.” How far has this country fallen, that views of an ex-slave and arguably the nation’s greatest abolitionist should be demonized as the views of white, racist, demagogues. It begs the question: what did Frederick Douglass, a man born into bondage who had every reason to hate this nation, understand that the American left doesn’t?
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