The Enigmatic Mr Douglass: Dennis Rasmussen on America's Fiercest Critic & its Greatest Fan.

Andrew Keen (0:00)

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everybody. It's Tuesday, the 15th of September. Last month, we did a show about Abraham Lincoln. Certainly not the first or the last show we've done, one of America's most iconic figures, politicians.

Jonathan Earle had a new book out about him, published by Oxford University Press, called He Has The People, which in Earle's world, Earle's words brought Lincoln down from Mount Rushmore, made him an ordinary man. Today, we're talking about another Oxford University Press book, about another major figure in American political history, who lived during Lincoln's time, Frederick Douglass. My guest is Dennis C. Rasmussen, who teaches political theory at Syracuse University. He has a new book out, Frederick Douglass's American Founding, How the Nation's Fiercest Critic Embraced the Conversation. Dennis is joining us from a rainy Syracuse. It always rains in Syracuse. Dennis and I joked before we went live. Dennis, are you bringing the great Frederick Douglass down from his perch, from Rushmore? Of course, he's not up on Rushmore, but in at least a symbolic term. Are you making him into an ordinary man?

Dennis C. Rasmussen (1:59)

No, that's not the main goal. So first, just a quick correction. I'm sure my publisher would want me to notice Princeton University Press, not Oxford University Press, but no, my goal is not to, I mean, this is something that historians and political theorists often do. They want to humanize, you know, George Washington or Lincoln or whoever it is.

You know, I do hope I treat Douglass as a flesh and blood figure, but that's not my goal is to bring him down from any pedestal. In fact, I'd say, you know, it's pretty remarkable. He's a hero to most Americans on both the left and the right in a way that a few others are. Even Lincoln, who you just mentioned, now has his detractors, above all, because of his alleged racism. But Douglass is admired on the left and the right alike, and that's merited.

Andrew Keen (2:45)

Frederick Douglass, of course, has been written about extensively. David Blight's book won the Pulitzer Prize. Why another book on Douglass?

What's the point?

Dennis C. Rasmussen (2:57)

Sure. So this book isn't a biography of Blight's. Very good. Very good and full biography of Douglass. My book is more on Douglass' view of the founders and the founding, the Declaration of Independence and above all, the Constitution. The idea being, this is, as everybody knows by now, the 250th anniversary of 1776 We're all talking about the founding, and I think it's worth our while to look at Frederick Douglass' view of the founding and founders. All the more interesting and remarkable because he changed his mind radically midway through his career.

For the first half of his career as an abolitionist, he saw the founding and founders as wicked oppressors, and the founding is evil, and later he saw them as more anti-slavery than almost anyone today would dare to view them, and he called the Constitution a glorious liberty document. So he changed his mind radically midway through his career.

Andrew Keen (3:53)

It's quite a remarkable shift, as you say, a radical shift, he's very well known for his essay, What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July, a speech that he delivered in 1852 So how did he begin his career in terms of thinking about the Constitution?

Dennis C. Rasmussen (4:12)

So he came up, so he was of course born enslaved, he was enslaved on Maryland's Eastern Shore, escaped to the North at age 20 He worked for a few years as a manual laborer, but he entered the abolitionist movement under the wing of William Lloyd Garrison, who was at that time the nation's foremost abolitionist. He was the organizer of the biggest anti-slavery society in the country. He was the editor of The Liberator, the biggest anti-slavery newspaper.

He found Douglass and took Douglass under his wing. Douglass was throughout the 1840s very much a Garrisonian. One of the things that meant was he was hostile to the Constitution, hostile to the founders. Garrison frequently called the Constitution an agreement with death and a covenant with hell.

In one rally, he burned a copy of the Constitution and ground its ashes under his heel. So he was not a fan of the Constitution. And Douglass followed him for a good decade or so during his first decade as an abolitionist.

Andrew Keen (5:14)

It's astonishing really, particularly in the context, I guess, of the America of the 2020s. The idea of an American burning the Constitution symbolically or otherwise.

Why did William Lloyd Garrison come to that conclusion?