This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, November 27th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Abolitionists in the 19th century themselves differed largely on whether the Constitution was at its core a pro-slavery

or anti-slavery document. Frederick Douglas for his part held both views at different

times in his life. Damon Root is author of the new book,

A Glorious Liberty, Frederick Douglas,

and the fight for an anti-slavery constitution.

We spoke earlier this month.

Set the stage for us here.

Frederick Douglas, the great orator, writer, American thinker.

I think it's almost fair to think of him as like the final founder in a way, the way that he presented

ideas, and absolutely bold in his pronouncements about how the world works and how people ought to think about things.

Who were his allies in trying to understand the Constitution as it existed in a particular way and what changes were

needed to it, if any, to remedy the great crime of slavery.

So for the first decade of his career as an abolitionist,

Frederick Douglas is a self-described faithful disciple of William Lloyd Garrison

and Garrison's The great Massachusetts abolitionist,

founder and publisher of the Liberator,

the extremely important abolitionist newspaper.

And Garrison's view is that the Constitution

is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.

It's a pro-slaver document drenched in human blood.

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