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Article: 'A glorious liberty document': Frederick Douglass' case for an anti-slavery Constitution.(Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July)(Book review)
- Article from:
- Reason
- Article date:
- October 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Reason Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July, by James A. Colaiaco, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 256 pages, $24.95
ON JANUARY 27, 1843, in a resolution adopted by the American Anti-Slavery Society, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison famously denounced the U.S. Constitution for sanctioning the crime of slavery. "The compact which exists between the North and the South" Garrison wrote, "is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell."
Was he right? Did the Constitution protect the right to own human property? Frederick Douglass, the escaped former slave, self-taught author and editor, and leading abolitionist orator, thought not. "Take the ...