This chapter responds to the objections raised by critics of moderation beginning with the famous remark of Barry Goldwater in 1964. It makes a case for moderation understood as a rebellious attitude that requires courage and non-conformism. It calls attention to the iinstitutional aspects of moderation that are often ignored or underestimated.

The abolition movement in Britain and America was primarily led and supported by people driven by Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. The major role of Quakers before 1800 is generally acknowledged. However, "[m]ost recent assessments neglect, avoid, or dismiss the Evangelicals," one scholar noted, and their much greater role after Quaker efforts faded after 1800. By contrast, the prior generation of historians typically concluded that the "evangelical roots of radical abolition are well documented"; "the abolition movement grew out of evangelical Protestantism"; and "[t]here is no question of the importance of Evangelicalism in American anti-slavery." Quakers and Evangelicals publicized the horrors of slavery, and condemned slavery theologically as sin, while building on the revolutionary generation’s widespread discomfort with slavery, and achieving steps toward gradual emancipation in the northern states. Evangelicals after 1800 broadened the movement, appealing to many of those claiming conversion in the Second Great Awakening, and supported immediate abolition. Though not every leader or supporter was primarily motivated by religious beliefs, a large number were, and Judeo-Christian faith was crucial in the abolition movement. Those activities of the abolition movement consisted largely of Judeo-Christian religious speech: sermons and oratory, tracts and circulars, antislavery newspapers and other publications, and petitions.

In 1851, Frederick Douglass publicly challenged the position of William Lloyd Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society that the U.S. Constitution was a proslavery document. As an enslaved child, the self-taught Douglass had identified literacy as “the pathway from slavery to freedom.” The same insight prompted the mature author and editor to part ways with Garrisonian moral suasionists in order to join “legal suasionists” like antislavery constitutionalist lawyers Lysander Spooner and William Goodell. From the 1840s through the 1890s, Douglass promoted the legal literacy of everyday African Americans (free and enslaved) while developing his own legal-critical analysis of American racism. Committed to wielding the “forms of law and . . . rules of hermeneutics” on behalf of freedom and equality, Douglass tirelessly challenged the increasingly biopolitical orientation of post-Reconstruction legislation and jurisprudence. From slavery to mass incarceration, Douglass insisted, racism is incompatible with the rule of law.

The chapter discusses Douglass’s three major autobiographical narratives – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, 1892) – in multiple and sometimes competing contexts. Taken together, Douglass’s autobiographies, which are indebted to the American autobiographical tradition established by Benjamin Franklin, reveal a black leader who regularly revises himself and his ideas. The Narrative appears to advocate William Lloyd Garrison’s moral suasionism and to draw on the slave narrative tradition. But Douglass worked against that tradition when he revised the Narrative for publication in Ireland in 1845 and 1846. In the 1855 My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass emphasized his close connections to the black community and his support for revolutionary violence. His monumental Life and Times, written near the end of his career, linked the struggles and contingencies of his own life with that of the nation.

Throughout the antebellum period, the beliefs in force and direct action splintered the abolitionist movement. Black leadership believed moral suasion failed to protect black people and produce liberation. For some time, Douglass’s endorsement of Garrison’s ideology was out of step with black leaders that wanted the ability to defend their humanity. This essay illustrates how Douglass’s thinking evolved regarding the utility of moral suasion and the direction of the movement overall. Through the force of events, Douglass’s stance in the abolitionist movement shifted from nonresistance to political violence. In time, he conceded and then advocated for emancipation by violent means. Douglass’s stance and celebrity shaped the movement. He helped usher the movement from a group of religious outsiders to a political force who welcomed a war of abolition.

This chapter shifts the focus to the Constitution by tracking the emergence of historical readings of the Constitution and showing how debates over slavery drew attention to the historical realities of change since and distance from the founding era. The very act of producing a written constitution initiated this development. At first, the move to see the new Constitution as archival contributed to its status as a sacred document, but that move also had the potential to rapidly desacralize the Constitution by revealing that its roots rested in a distinct temporal setting. The death of James Madison in 1836 sparked efforts to publish and use his writings to interpret the Constitution. The slavery debates shaped that usage. Some abolitionists followed William Lloyd Garrison in using Madison’s Papers to damn the Constitution, but many antislavery constitutionalists advanced interpretations that emphasized the framers’ anticipation of eventual emancipation. Coupled with a stress on slavery’s unexpected spread and the sudden rise of the Slave Power, these antislavery accounts of original expectation cultivated a new sense of temporal dislocation from America’s most useful past.

Chapter 3 focuses on Douglass’ relationship with abolitionist networks and print culture. He was a shrewd activist and formed friendships with newspaper editors, prominent citizens who had influence over the local press, and sometimes wrote for newspapers specifically to clarify his opinions or to cause further controversy, such as the Cambria in 1847. The constant exchange of letters and newspaper articles that reported on his speeches maintained essential momentum for the antislavery cause and enhanced a connected feeling of solidarity. This network did have its disadvantages however, as white abolitionists were not free from prejudice and Douglass – like other Black activists – struggled against a white racist schema that threatened to control Black bodies. However, Douglass left Britain more independent and determined to seek his antislavery career outside the realm of white control.