BRYAN PRESTON: Do We Still Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident?

Taking the words of the Declaration together with the preamble to Constitution and Douglass rightly saw the ideas that would inevitably end slavery, as long as the republic endured long enough to see it. In 1852, as now, this was not ironclad. So, to the free man, the Fourth of July represented his guarantee. To those still enslaved, the Fourth of July represented hope of freedom to come. Frederick Douglass’ experience led him to see this more clearly than anyone else of his age and probably anyone since or now.

The storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake Douglass spoke of came, in the form of a destructive civil war. America paid in blood and treasure as it never had before, and slavery was ended. Douglass lived through it as one of abolitionism’s most ardent, eloquent, passionate, and heard spokesman. He had risen from slavery to become a friend of presidents, as a citizen, though not yet in full. Few have the power of oration without experience, and Douglass had experienced it all. He had lived under unjust law. He had broken that law. And he also respected and served the higher law, the Constitution, which he respected as a means of reaching understanding and offering hope. He was a true American on July 4, 1852, more true than many others.

On July 4, 2020, people as yet unknown damaged and toppled the statue of Frederick Douglass in Rochester that marks his moment and his speech. The damage was so extensive that it will probably have to be replaced.

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