Frederick Douglass Lectures on “The Anti-Slavery Movement” and the Constitution

“The patriots of the American Revolution clearly saw, and with all their inconsistency, they had the grace to confess the abhorrent character of slavery, and to hopefully predict its overthrow and complete extirpation.” (p10)

The Garrisonians, or the American Anti-Slavery Society … chief energies are expended in confirming the opinion, that the United States Constitution is, and was, intended to be a slave-holding instrument—thus piling up, between the slave and his freedom, the huge work of the abolition of the Government, as an indispensable condition to emancipation. My point here is, first, the Constitution is, according to its reading, an anti-slavery document; and, secondly, to dissolve the Union, as a means to abolish slavery, is about as wise as it would be to burn up this city, in order to get the thieves out of it. But again, we hear the motto, ‘no union with slave-holders;’ and I answer it, as that noble champion of liberty, N. P. Rogers, answered it with a more sensible motto, namely—'No union with slave-holding.’ I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.” (p33)

“the ‘Liberty Party’—a small body of citizens, chiefly in the State of New York, but having sympathizers all over the North… is the radical, and to my thinking, the only abolition organization in the country… denies that slavery is, or can be legalized. It denies that the Constitution of the United States is a pro-slavery instrument, and asserts the power and duty of the Federal Government to abolish slavery in every State of the Union.” (p34-35)

★ FREDERICK DOUGLASS. Printed Pamphlet, The Anti-Slavery Movement. A Lecture by Frederick Douglass, Before the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Rochester, New York: Lee, Mann & Co., [March 19] 1855. 44 pp., 5½ x 8⅝ in. #27686