\u201cWhat to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,\u201d<\/a> delivered on July 5th, 1852, to a predominantly white audience at Rochester\u2019s Corinthian Hall, captured the contradictions built into the nation\u2019s July Fourth celebrations, then and to this day. The nation\u2019s founding document may have declared that \u201cAll men are created equal,\u201d but at the time of Douglass\u2019 speech over three million Black people were enslaved. Douglass\u2019 decision to deliver the speech on July 5th conveyed his view that the Fourth was not yet worth celebrating, for the holiday revealed to the American slave, \u201cmore than all other days in the year,\u201d as Douglass put it, \u201cthe gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.\u201d The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery in 1865, but \u201cWhat to the Slave\u201d continues to speak to many readers about the gross injustice and cruelty of a nation that fails to offer equal opportunities and justice for all.<\/p>\nThat speech, however, may not be the most compelling or even relevant of Douglass\u2019 speeches for this year\u2019s Fourth of July. A better candidate would be his 1867 \u201cSources of Danger to the Republic,\u201d delivered after the Civil War on several occasions, including as part of a Black-sponsored lecture series in Philadelphia. Douglass took stock of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the democratic promise of the Declaration of Independence, and his concerns prophetically anticipate our present moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cSources of Danger\u201d was prompted by Douglass\u2019 anger at President Andrew Johnson, whom he believed had betrayed the promise of Reconstruction by attempting to block all legislation intended to bring about racial equality. Though not delivered on or near July Fourth, the speech shares much of the holiday\u2019s sentiment. Douglass begins with an appeal to \u201cpatriotic citizens of the United States,\u201d and, stopping short of \u201cFourth-of-July extravagances,\u201d he offers his \u201chumble gratitude to the fathers who framed the nation\u2019s founding documents.\u201d (I quote from the version Douglass gave to the Black audience in Philadelphia on January 3, 1867.)<\/p>\n
As in his more famous Fifth of July speech, Douglass laments the nation\u2019s failure to live up to \u201cthe great principles of the Declaration of Independence.\u201d In addition, he argues in \u201cSources of Danger\u201d that the Constitution makes the presidency into something like a monarchy and thus a threat to democracy. Douglass concedes that there are electoral limits on the presidency, making it different from a monarchy. Nevertheless, the president, invested as he is with nearly unlimited power, \u201ccan reign long enough to commit any number of mischievous acts, and so defeat the most beneficent measures of our Government.\u201d<\/p>\n
How did it happen that some of the signers and supporters of the Declaration of Independence could create a government in which a president like Johnson is \u201cinvested with kingly powers\u201d? Douglass speculates that the \u201cfathers of this republic,\u201d who were born under \u201cmonarchical institutions,\u201d retained an unconscious nostalgia for monarchy. That nostalgia led to a key mistake in the Constitution\u2014the elevation of the presidency to a kingship\u2014which \u201cmust now be corrected.\u201d\u00a0 As he instructs his audience, \u201cYou must have either a purely republican Government or you must have a monarchical Government, one or the other.\u201d The burden of what could be called Douglass\u2019 No-Kings speech is to identify the problem and suggest how to fix it.<\/p>\n
Initially, the problem seems to be Andrew Johnson. Douglass states that the framers of the Constitution failed to anticipate a president like Johnson\u2014a man willing to take full advantage of the lack of restraints on the presidency to become a \u201cone-man power.\u201d But even though Douglass refers to Johnson now and again, over the course of the speech he steps back in order to make a larger case about Constitutional failure and more disinterestedly offers his concerns about the nation\u2019s future presidents and prospects.<\/p>\n
\u201cKing Andy,\u201d illustration by Thomas Nast. From Harper\u2019s Weekly<\/em>, November 1, 1866.<\/span><\/p>\nDouglass first calls attention to how the Constitution puts \u201cimmense<\/em> patronage in the hands of the President.\u201d The president, he observes, has access to \u201chundred millions of dollars per annum in times of peace, and uncounted thousands of millions in times of war.\u201d There are only limited constraints on how he might use the money. He can use it to advance his own policies or even to enrich himself and assume power over others. Douglass is particularly concerned about how easily the president can distribute the nation\u2019s money \u201camong his political friends.\u201d At the thought, Douglass can only throw up his hands and declare: \u201cWhat a power! What a corrupting power!\u201d<\/p>\nAnd there\u2019s more: Douglass calls attention to the corruption enabled by the president\u2019s veto power. He is outraged that a single person\u2014the president\u2014can overrule a simple majority of congressional legislators. The idea that the president always out-votes an under two-thirds congressional majority is \u201can absurdity,\u201d Douglass says, as well as an affront to democracy. Douglass leaves no doubt about what he thinks should be done to address the anti-democratic presidential veto: \u201cI want that old, despotic, and aristocratic power of our Government utterly banished from our Constitution. It has no business in a republican form of government.\u201d Even in England, Douglass points out, no such power is invested in the monarchy.<\/p>\n
Even though Douglass refers to Johnson now and again, over the course of the speech he steps back in order to make a larger case about Constitutional failure and more disinterestedly offers his concerns about the nation\u2019s future presidents and prospects.<\/p>\n
Douglass next turns to the president\u2019s pardoning power as yet another source of danger. He does not want to eliminate the possibility of pardons, but he sees corruption as the inevitable result of the president\u2019s absolute right to grant them. In Douglass\u2019 time, he was particularly angry about Johnson\u2019s decision to pardon nearly all of the leaders of the former Confederacy. As a political theorist, however, he looked into the future and was especially concerned about how unrestricted pardons added to presidential power. With the help of the Constitution, a president\u2019s ability to pardon felons could be deployed \u201cto win personal friends and co-operation and alliance, instead of loyal obedience to the laws of the land.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among Douglass\u2019 suggestions for limiting presidential power, perhaps the most pertinent for our present historical moment is his call to abolish the president\u2019s ability to undertake \u201csecret diplomacy.\u201d which puts the nation at risk. As Douglass warns, a bad president will choose a bad cabinet, and with \u201ca bad President and a bad Cabinet\u201d doing the secretive diplomatic work, \u201cthis nation might be conducted into the jaws of a terrible war, and be perfectly helpless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrew Johnson, the immediate focus of Douglass\u2019 critique, was impeached that next year. Douglass thought he should have been convicted for crimes against Black people, but he was impeached for something very different: his violation of the Tenure of Office Act by firing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. But was impeachment the best response to the problem? In \u201cSources of Danger\u201d Douglass insists that broad constitutional change, rather than rituals of impeachment, would help to insure the future of the country.<\/p>\n
Even in an angry and at times despairing speech like \u201cSources of Danger to the Republic,\u201d Douglass retained hope for the future, calling on Americans to secure the democratic promise of the nation. \u201cStrike down the one-man power everywhere,\u201d he says at the speech\u2019s conclusion; \u201cmake your Government lean to the people, and away from the individual or the one-man power.\u201d If Americans are willing to do that, through constitutional reform or other means, \u201cyou make sure the permanence, prosperity, and glory of this great republic.\u201d This is Douglass\u2019 wish and request to us from 1867. As in \u201cWhat to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,\u201d he reminds Americans of the still unfulfilled egalitarian promise of the Declaration of Independence, and there is no better time for such a reminder than July Fourth.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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