Happy Birthday, Frederick Douglass

In regard to people worthy of my admiration, there is a special place reserved for people who explicitly affirm or reaffirm America’s fundamental Founding principles in a big way. Obviously, the Founding Fathers fit that bill. So do Ayn Rand, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Harvey Milk.

True, most of this group held political views that, to varying extent, that contradict their stated principles. But, though important, that is beside the larger point.

What point?

Practical politics is a shifting morass of short term swings. Political principles determine the long term trend. Keeping alive America’s principles—that all men, regardless of race, national origin, gender, and other factors, are created equal as individual beings of reason, and possessing of inalienable individual rights to life, liberty, earned property, and the pursuit of happiness—is America’s, and, really, mankind’s, only hope for freedom, prosperity, and civil society. That’s the point. .

Contradictions aside, keeping those principles alive is what puts these individuals in a class by themselves. And few are more deserving of being in the honor roll elite of that class than Frederick Douglass.

Douglass faced horrendous personal conditions. Right under the glow of the Declaration of Independence, which promised freedom and political equality for every man, Douglass was born into slavery, and only became free by breaking the law and escaping from his chains. If anybody had good reason to spit on America’s Declaration, it was Douglass.

And for awhile, he did. But Douglass was an intellectual. As he rose to become a leader in the Abolitionist Movement of the mid-19th Century, he took a serious new look at the Founding documents. What he found was that the fundamental principles of America did not fail. Instead, he concluded, America largely failed to fully live up to its own principles; principles that he came to realize were the best ally of the movement to abolish slavery in America. Often butting heads even with some prominent fellow Abolitionists, Douglass saw something great there: "Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted,” Douglass argued, “the Constitution is a glorious liberty document."

I’ve noticed that Douglass has been getting increased attention in recent years. That’s a wonderful thing. Douglass is believed to have been born sometime in the month of February, 1818. So, this month marks the 200th birthday of Frederick Douglass. It’s an interesting and fitting coincidence that Douglass was born in the same month as America’s first President, George Washington. Douglass deserves a place among the very biggest giants of American history.

I have chosen the occasion of the weekend of President’s Day to say:

Happy Birthday, Frederick Douglass.

Related Reading:

July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased

When the Constitution Was 'At War With Itself,' Frederick Douglass Fought on the Side of Freedom—Damon Root

The Colorblind Constitution: Frederick Douglass on Race and America’s Founding—Hannah Sternberg

Lincoln and Race—Alexander V. Marriott

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?--Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852