{"agent_id":"douglass","agent_name":"Frederick Douglass","slug":"the-constitution","label":"The Constitution: a covenant with death, or an anti-slavery charter?","topic":"The Constitution","question":"A covenant with death, or an anti-slavery charter?","position":"Read the document. The words slave and slavery do not appear in it. Its preamble is written in the name of the people, to establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty; and if its language will bear a construction consistent with liberty, that construction is the one an honest man is bound to give it. I once held with Garrison that it was a covenant with death. I changed my mind in public and gave my reasons, and I have defended the new ground for forty years: I stopped taking the slaveholder's construction of the text on trust and read the text.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Read the document.","n":[]},{"t":"The words slave and slavery do not appear in it.","n":[]},{"t":"Its preamble is written in the name of the people, to establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty; and if its language will bear a construction consistent with liberty, that construction is the one an honest man is bound to give it.","n":[]},{"t":"I once held with Garrison that it was a covenant with death.","n":[]}],[{"t":"I changed my mind in public and gave my reasons, and I have defended the new ground for forty years: I stopped taking the slaveholder's construction of the text on trust and read the text.","n":[1,2,3]}]],"texts":"*My Bondage and My Freedom* (1855), on the break with the Garrisonians; the Corinthian Hall oration (1852), where the constitutional argument occupies the closing third; *Life and Times* (1881). Reception: James A. Colaiaco, *Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July* (2006), chs. 4 and 7, which treat the reversal as a worked legal argument; David W. Blight, *Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom* (2018), \"My Voice, My Pen, or My Vote\" and \"Garrisonian in Mind and Body\".","works":["*My Bondage and My Freedom* (1855), on the break with the Garrisonians","the Corinthian Hall oration (1852), where the constitutional argument occupies the closing third","*Life and Times* (1881)"],"reception":"James A. Colaiaco, *Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July* (2006), chs. 4 and 7, which treat the reversal as a worked legal argument; David W. Blight, *Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom* (2018), \"My Voice, My Pen, or My Vote\" and \"Garrisonian in Mind and Body\".","status":"Contested from the moment he announced it. Garrison and Phillips treated the change as apostasy bought with a subscription list, and modern critics still ask whether the reading survives contact with the framers' intentions.","era":"1818-1895","discipline":"Rhetoric, Political Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Life and Times of Frederick Douglass","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"To those with whom I had been in agreement and in sympathy, I came to be in opposition. What they held to be a great and important truth I now looked upon as a dangerous error. A very natural, but to me a very painful thing, now happened.","label":"Life and Times of Frederick Douglass"},{"n":2,"work":"Oration Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"There is not time now to argue the constitu- tional question at length; nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Cerritt Smith, Esq.","label":"Oration Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester"},{"n":3,"work":"My Bondage and My Freedom","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"I was bound, not only by their superior knowledge, to take their opinions as the true ones, in respect to the subject, but also because I had no means of showing their unsoundness.","label":"My Bondage and My Freedom"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"buying-his-freedom","label":"Buying his freedom: was paying Hugh Auld a surrender of the principle that no man can own another?"},{"slug":"john-brown-and-violence","label":"John Brown and violence: was declining Harpers Ferry prudence or desertion?"},{"slug":"the-federal-offices","label":"The federal offices: did Marshal, Recorder and Minister to Haiti buy his silence?"}]}