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“Each for All and All for Each”: The Liberal Statesmanship of Frederick Douglass

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2008

Nicholas Buccola
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Abstract

Most scholars agree that Frederick Douglass was a liberal—he was committed to individual rights, toleration, limited government, and self-reliance. Wilson Carey McWilliams deviated from this view by suggesting that Douglass's experience as a slave led him to appreciate human interdependence and reject liberalism in favor of fraternal communitarianism. In this essay, Douglass's response to the problem of slavery is examined in order to demonstrate that both the liberal and the fraternal readings are correct. Douglass's aims were undoubtedly liberal, but he thought these aims could only be realized in a community of individuals who felt strong obligations to one another. As a statesman, Douglass was confronted with the challenge of convincing free people that they ought to care about those who are enslaved. My aim here is to explore how he met that challenge and with what consequences for how we think about liberal statesmanship.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 70 , Issue 3 , Summer 2008 , pp. 400 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2008

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References

1 Blassingame, John, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979–1992)Google Scholar, “The Nation's Problem,” April 16, 1889, 5:424–25. [Hereinafter: Douglass Papers, title of speech, date of speech, volume: Page Number.]

2 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this way of framing the nature of Douglass's contribution.

3 Douglass Papers, “We Are Not Yet Quite Free,” August 3, 1869, 4: 233.

4 Goldstein, Leslie Friedman, “The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass” (Ph.D. diss. Cornell University, 1974), 55Google Scholar; Martin, Waldo E., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1984), 71, 256Google Scholar; Shklar, Judith, American Citizenship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 97Google Scholar; Diggins, John P., On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 275Google Scholar; Lawson, Bill E., “Frederick Douglass and Social Progress,” in Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, ed. Kirkland, Frank M. and Lawson, Bill E. (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 383Google Scholar; Ericson, David F., The Debate over Slavery (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 42Google Scholar; Schrader, David, “Natural Law in Douglass's Constitutional Thought,” in Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1999Google Scholar); McKeen, Gayle, “Whose Rights? Whose Responsibility? Self-Help in African-American Thought,” Polity 34, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 415CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Myers, Peter C., “Frederick Douglass' Natural Rights Constitutionalism: The Postwar, Pre-Progressive Period,” in The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science, ed. Marini, John and Masugi, Ken (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005)Google Scholar.

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8 Storing, Herbert, “Frederick Douglass,” in American Political Thought: The Philosophic Dimension of American Statesmanship, ed. Frisch, Morton J. and Stevens, Richard J. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 145Google Scholar. For a more recent account that reaches a similar conclusion, see Ruderman, Richard S., “Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land: Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and the Abolition of Slavery,” in History of American Political Thought, ed. Frost, Bryan-Paul and Sikkenga, Jeffrey (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003)Google Scholar.

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13 Jeremiah Moses, Wilson, Creative Conflict in African American Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “At the peak of his power and influence, Douglass scoffed at the idea of black unity, opposed the idea of separate black institutions, and sometimes denied the need for any concept of racial pride. And yet, he continued to participated in black institutions, took pride in black accomplishments, and exploited his status as a black spokesman.”

14 My interpretation is not altogether novel. Goldstein, Myers, and Martin, for example, all recognize the importance of community and responsibility in Douglass's thought. I do think, though, that many of Douglass's interpreters—Judith Shklar and John Patrick Diggins come to mind—have overemphasized Douglass's individualism at the expense of an appreciation of the communitarian elements. Shklar identifies Douglass with “the party of individual effort” and Diggins identifies him with the “liberal individualism” of contemporary black conservatives like Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell.

15 By this, I mean that Douglass believed the natural rights of all individuals must be respected and that it is an unacceptable moral state of affairs if the natural rights of any individual are being violated. The respect and protection of rights is required not by utility or convention, but by natural law.

16 Douglass Papers, “The Dred Scott Decision,” May 1857, 3:173.

17 Ibid., 173–74.

18 In all fairness to Garrison, it should be noted that he believed disunion would leave slaveholders more susceptible to slave revolts and, therefore, force them to consider emancipation more seriously. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing this point.

19 Douglass Papers, “Our Composite Nationality,” December 7, 1869, 4:251.

20 Life and Writings, “Is Civil Government Right?” 1851, 5: 209.

21 When Douglass used the term “human brotherhood” he intended for women to be included. When Douglass was thinking of changing the name of his newspaper, one of the possibilities was “The Brotherhood,” but he rejected this name because he worried it “implies an exclusion of the sisterhood.”

22 Douglass Papers, “The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies,” August, 3, 1857, 3: 195.

23 Douglass Papers, “The Blessings of Liberty and Education,” September 3, 1894, 5: 625.

24 Douglass Papers, “The American Apocalypse,” June 16, 1861, 3: 444.

25 More on moral ecology below.

26 For a discussion of the irrational element of many theories of community, see Booth Fowler, Robert, The Dance with Community (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1993), 3Google Scholar.

27 Life and Writings, “Change in Opinion Announced,” May 23, 1851, 2:156.

28 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, trans. and ed. Mansfield, Harvey and Winthrop, Delba (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 501CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 For Douglass's discussions of “the slave power,” see “The Encroachment of Slave Power,” September 5, 1855, and “Aggressions of the Slave Power,” May 22, 1856, Douglass Papers, 3: 97, 114.

30 Douglass Papers, “We Are Not Yet Quite Free,” August 3, 1869, 4: 233.

31 Douglass Papers, “The Nation's Problem,” April 16, 1889, 5: 424.

32 Ibid., 424–25.

33 For m0ore discussion of the relationship between Douglass's philosophy of self-reliance and his commitment to intellectual and moral cultivation, see McKeen, “Whose,” 415.

34 Life and Writings, “The Prospect in the Future,” August 1860, 2: 494.

35 Ibid., 495.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid., 496.

38 Ibid., 497.

39 In philosophical terms, sympathy from brotherhood is an a priori view of human dignity, and sympathy from merit is an a posteriori view of human dignity.

40 Life and Writings, “The Prospect in the Future,” August 1860, 2: 497.

41 Ibid.

42 Douglass Papers, “Citizenship and the Spirit of Caste,” May 11, 1858, 3: 210.

43 It is worth noting that Douglass's appeal to black men to enlist in the Union Army was also, at least in part, rooted in his belief that courageous service would contribute to a greater sense of concern and respect from whites.

44 Douglass Papers, “The Slaveholders' Rebellion,” July 4, 1862, 2: 536.

45 Life and Writings, “Freedom in the West Indies,” August 2, 1858, 2: 224.

46 Douglass's message about the virtues of courage and independence directs us to a crucial point of controversy among his interpreters. On one side, there is Carey McWilliams, who argued that Douglass was devoted to fraternity, the antithesis of the liberal doctrine of self-reliance. On the other side, we have Douglass's critics—including Wilson Jeremiah Moses and Peter Walker—who argue that Douglass's appeal to a robust sense of obligation is vitiated by his emphasis on self-reliance. My claim is that both of these interpretations are flawed. Instead of choosing between fraternity and self-reliance, as McWilliams would have it, Douglass chose both. He argued that self-reliant behavior could enhance an individual's sense of self-respect and enhance the respect of others.

47 Life and Writings, “The Civil Rights Case,” October 22, 1883, 4: 394.

48 Hertzke, Allen D., “The Concept of Moral Ecology,” Review of Politics 60, no. 4 (1998), 629CrossRefGoogle Scholar. To explain the idea, Hertzke gives the example of the Navajo “way of life,” which held that “living an ecological life meant not only living in harmony with nature but also with one another.” Sociologist Robert Bellah contends that the concern with moral ecology is rooted in a belief that “human beings and their societies are deeply interrelated, and the actions we take have enormous ramifications for the lives of others.” Bellah, Robert et al. Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 284Google Scholar.

49 Life and Writings, “Letter to Gerrit Smith,” October 1874, 4: 308; Douglass Papers, “The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies,” August 1857, 3:193–94, “Lessons of the Hour,” January 1894, 5: 596.

50 Life and Writings, “We Are Confronted by a New Administration,” April, 1885, 2:497.

51 Shklar, Judith, “The Liberalism of Fear,” in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Rosenblum, Nancy L. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 21Google Scholar.

52 Douglass Papers, “America's Compromise with Slavery and the Abolitionists' Work,” April 1846, 1: 210.

53 Life and Writings, “The Prospect in the Future,” 2: 496–97.

54 Life and Writings, “The Southern Convention,” July 1871, 4: 251.

55 Allen, Jonathan, “The Place of Negative Morality in Political Theory,” Political Theory 29, no. 3 (2001), 337–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 In saying this, I am not accusing all liberals or any particular liberal of failing to be attentive to moral ecology. Rather than viewing Douglass's thought as a corrective to the failures of other liberals, I think his thought contributes to the arguments of those contemporary scholars who have attempted to show that moral concerns have always been a central part of liberal theory. See, e.g., Peter Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

57 Shklar, Judith, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 5Google Scholar.

58 Douglass Papers, “The American Apocalypse,” June 1861, 3:437–38.