52

204 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

New York, and during the first four years of my labors here I advocated them
with pen and tongue, to the best of my ability. After a time, a careful reconsideration
of the subject convinced me that there was no necessity for dissolving
the "union between the northern and southern States;" that to seek
this dissolution was no part of my duty as an abolitionist; that to abstain from
voting was to refuse to exercise a legitimate and powerful means for abolishing
slavery; and that the Constitution of the United States not only contained
no guarantees in favor of slavery, but on the contrary, was in its letter and
spirit an anti-slavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a
condition of its own existence, as the supreme law of the land.

This radical change in my opinions produced a corresponding change in
my action. To those with whom I had been in agreement and in sympathy, I
came to be in opposition. What they held to be a great and important truth I
now looked upon as a dangerous error. A very natural, but to me a very painful
thing, now happened. Those who could not see any honest reasons for
changing their views, as I had done, could not easily see any such reasons
for my change, and the common punishment of apostates was mine.

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 made it seem to be. I was bound not only by their superior
knowledge to take their opinions in respect to this subject, as the true ones,
but also because I had no means of showing their unsoundness. 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 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