Although the history of black Americans begins in 1619 with the arrival of the first slaves in America, the political history of black Americans actually begins much later, in 1787 – the year in which the American political system was constructed – the year in which the Constitution was written. Today, many critics assert that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document, and to prove this, they point to the Three-Fifths Clause, claiming that the Constitution says that blacks are only three-fifths of a person.
One of the earliest black Americans to investigate this claim was the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Douglass had been born into slavery and remained a slave until he escaped to New York in 1838. Three years after his escape, he delivered an anti-slavery speech in Massachusetts. He was promptly hired to work for the State’s anti-slavery society, and he also served as a preacher at Zion Methodist Church.
During the Civil War, Douglass helped recruit the first black regiment to fight for the Union, and he advised Abraham Lincoln on the Emancipation Proclamation Frederick Douglass fleeing from slavery and other important issues. Following the Civil War, Douglass received Presidential appointments from Republican Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James A. Garfield. Democratic President Grover Cleveland removed Frederick Douglass from office but Republican President Benjamin Harrison reappointed him.
During Douglass’s first years of freedom, he studied at the feet of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who taught him that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document. 19 Douglass accepted this claim, and his early speeches and writings reflected that belief. However, Douglass later began to research the subject for him; he read the Constitution; he read the writings of those who wrote the Constitution; and what he found revolutionized his thinking. He concluded that the Constitution was not a pro-slavery but an anti-slavery document.
He explained: I was, on the anti-slavery question . . . fully committed to doctrine touching the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. . . . I advocated it with pen and tongue, according to the best of my ability. . . . Upon a reconsideration of the whole subject, I became convinced . . . that the Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery but, on the contrary, it is in its letter and spirit an anti-slavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence as the supreme law of the land. Here was a radical change in my opinions. . . . Brought directly, when I escaped from slavery, into contact with a class of abolitionists regarding the Constitution as a slaveholding instrument . . . it is not strange that I assumed the Constitution to be just what their interpretation made it. . . . But I was now conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States . . . was not designed . . . to maintain and perpetuate a system of . . . slavery – especially as not one word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief.
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