"if there is once a will in the people of America to abolish slavery, there is no word, no syllable in the Constitution to forbid that result" - Frederick Douglass
In a 1860 speech in Glasgow Frederick Douglass writes on the Constitution of the United States: 'Its language is "we the people;" not we the white people, not even we the citizens, not we the privileged class, not we the high, not we the low, but we the people'. The opinion that the Constitution of the United States is fundamentally anti-slavery is reflected in the 1860 Republican Platform, put together two months later, which declares: "That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, "That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States must and shall be preserved." Or, as Jim DeMint recently put it, 'the Constitution kept calling us back to 'all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights' in the mind of God'.
Over against the revolutionary tabula rasa of the Garrisonians, Frederick Douglass puts reform. The move to free the slaves came from the people, says Jim DeMint. People that refused to dissolve the Union, people that voted ...
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