This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, February 5, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How did the Value of Liberty, as spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and

given substance by the Constitution, come to be replaced by the value of

democracy where majority rule wins every time.

Tim Sandifers new Cato Institute book, The Conscience of the Constitution, explores that all-too-important

division.

He spoke at the Cato Institute last month.

On March 26, 1860, Frederick Douglas gave the most important speech of his life.

It's not among his most famous.

In fact, most biographers kind of skim over it

in a few sentences.

But it was the turning point in his career

and it was an important transition in the history of the American

Constitution. The speech was entitled, The Constitution of the United States, is it pro-slavery

or anti-slavery?

And in answering that question, anti-slavery,

Douglas was signaling a new phase in the abolitionist movement.

Previously, abolitionists led by William Lloyd Garrison had denounced the Constitution as a

packed with hell and burned it at July 4th meetings because they considered it an essentially pro-slavery document.

Garrison essentially agreed with the slave owners of the South that the Constitution

protected slavery as a property right,

...