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The speeches and writings of Frederick Douglass contain some of the most probing examinations ever of the role that slavery played in America鈥檚 founding. In Frederick Douglass鈥檚 American Founding, Dennis Rasmussen traces the great abolitionist鈥檚 intellectual journey from denouncing the founders as hypocrites and the Constitution as evil to embracing them both.

Throughout the 1840s, Douglass described the founders as 鈥渓ittle better than a band of pirates鈥� and the Constitution as 鈥渁 most cunningly-devised and wicked compact.鈥� Beginning in 1849, however, he undertook a long period of study and reflection that produced a dramatic change of mind. From 1851 on, Douglass contended that the founders were resolutely opposed to slavery and that the Constitution was a 鈥済lorious liberty document鈥� that required immediate emancipation, despite several clauses that appeared to suggest otherwise. Even after embracing the Constitution and the founders, Douglass remained second to none in castigating America for the evils of slavery. Indeed, as he argued in his greatest speech, 鈥淲hat to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?鈥� (1852), the glory of the nation鈥檚 founding ideals only put their persistent betrayal into starker relief. Douglass also came to regard the founders as radicals in their fight against tyranny. That was why he insisted that he and his fellow abolitionists, rather than moderates like Abraham Lincoln, were the founders鈥� true heirs.

Whatever you think about the founding, Douglass鈥檚 arguments will challenge鈥攁nd perhaps even change鈥攜our views. After seeing the Constitution through Douglass鈥檚 eyes, it is difficult to look at it in the same way again.