Frederick Douglass on Slavery and the Constitution

This professional development seminar will provide teachers with a comprehensive account of Frederick Douglass's thought on the place of slavery in the Constitution. Douglass initially concluded that the Constitution was proslavery, aligning with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. He would break with this view in 1851 to conclude that a textual reading of the document proved it to be antislavery. We will trace his arguments on the nature of slavery and self-government, discuss how this change of opinion on the Constitution occurred, and examine how he read the clauses of the Constitution that most directly applied to slavery during each period. The goal is to give teachers a clear example of how Douglass can be a useful figure for providing two these distinct conceptions of the Constitution.