PREAMBLE POWER!

THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION IS BOTH AN ANTI-SLAVERY DOCUMENT AND PRO-REPARATIONS DOCUMENT PER PREAMBLE @ FREDERICK DOUGLASS I had formerly been of the view that the United States Constitution was "pro-slavery" from my review of a wide variety of cases at the Howard University School of Law involving construing its provisions. My "pro-slavery" views were reinforced by my years (33) in the active practice of law in Missouri, both in the private solo practice, and as government lawyer at the Departments of Labor and Justice. Therefore, I was at least moderately surprised to hear, then later to read, that the great icon of African American abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, had viewed the Constitution as "anti-slavery!" I was a bit discommoded to learn this, but only a "bit;" after all, I was the experienced civil rights lawyer not he, albeit his being a clearly courageous, incredibly brilliant man! Fortunately I have now had an opportunity to read for myself how Douglass came to be of the view that the now-thrice-amended United States Constitution was other than as I viewed it and deemed it to be. First, he was of the view of it being "anti -slavery" in orientation BEFORE THE Civil War, thus before any post-war amending. If anything, that earlier posture made a more difficult case for him to make in his justification. So I thought smugly to myself, until I read this stentorian orator's logic. In LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS (1893), he wrote : "My first opinions were naturally derived and honestly entertained . Brought directly, when I escaped from slavery, into contact with abolitionists who regarded the Constitution as a slaveholding instrument, and finding their views supported by the united and entire history of every department of the government, it is not strange that I assumed the Constitution to be just what these friends of mine made it seem to be. I was bound not only by their superior knowledge, to take their opinions in respect of this subject, as the true ones, but also because I had no means of showing the unsoundness of these opinions. But for the responsibility of conducting a public journal , and the necessity imposed upon me of meeting opposite views from abolitionists outside of New England, I should in all probability have remained firm in my disunion views. My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject, and to study with some care not only the just and proper rules of legal interpretation, but the origin, design, nature, rights, powers and duties of civil governments, and also the relations which human beings sustain to it. By such a course of thought and reading I was conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States--inaugurated to 'form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty '--could not well have been designed at the same time to maintain and perpetuate a system of rapine and murder like slavery, especially as not one word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief. Then, again, if the declared purposes of an instrument are to govern the meaning of all its parts and details, as they clearly should, the Constitution of our country is our warrant for the abolition of slavery in every State of the Union." P. 705-706, DOUGLASS (1994) There! He had done it! By using the Preamble of the United States Constitution as his guide and stay, Frederick Douglass had used its own declared "original intent and purposes" to conform every other part and detail of the instrument to exact rules of legal interpretation. Bam! Thereby the great Frederick Douglass had upbraided, humbled, convinced me of the accuracy of his claims about the Constitution being "anti-slavery," in the years before the outbreak of the Civil War, and 124 years after his death in 1895; to wit: July 2, 2019. But, what is more, icon, Frederick Douglass had not only added a very powerful weapon to my legal and rhetorical arsenals to fight on behalf of securing long-past-due reparations for African Americans, generally, and for me particularly--the remaining duty that was left for the present generation of black and white freedom fighters to attain by use of the Preamble--but the great Frederick Douglass had re-taught me the value of self-reasoning ! What was true for slavery is also true for reparations to the progeny of the former slaves by the use of the Preamble of the Constitution!