A Lecture on the Anti-Slavery Movement

     "If the anti-slavery movement shall fail now, it will not be from outward opposition, but from inward decay. Its auxiliaries are everywhere. Scholars, authors, orators, poets, and statesmen, give it their aid" (Douglas 4).  

     In 1855 Frederick Douglas delivers this lecture to the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society.  It focuses on the organizations that make up the anti-slavery movement.  The four groups are the Garrisonians, the Anti-Garrisonians, the Free Soil Party, and the Liberty Party.  He critiques the way these groups approach their pursuit of the end of slavery.  He does so in order to examine how the Anti-Slavery movement can continue to grow.

     The reason Douglas takes the time to critique these organizations is because he wants to keep them from dying out.  Even if this were to happen, he believes that the Anti-Slavery movement has become so strong that it will continue to exist.  He does not fear that the movement will be stopped by opposing forces but that it can only end if it decays from within (Douglas 4).  This is why he takes the time to point out the errors in the current branches of the Anti-Slavery movement.  He believes that if these organizations take the wrong path and do not seek to abolish slavery for all men, then the movement will suffer.  He however believes that if those who support the movement hold on to the right principles, then the movement will definitely succeed (Douglas 4).

Douglas, Frederick "A Lecture on the Anti-Slavery Movement" The Americans (1855) Web.  27 March, 2015.

The Seventh of March Speech

   “Now, Sir, upon the general nature and influence of slavery there exists a wide difference of opinion between the northern portion of this country and the southern. It is said on the one side, that, although not the subject of any injunction or direct prohibition in the New Testament, slavery is a wrong; that it is founded merely in the right of the strongest; and that is an oppression, like unjust wars, like all those conflicts by which a powerful nation subjects a weaker to its will; and that, in its nature, whatever may be said of it in the modifications which have taken place, it is not according to the meek spirit of the Gospel. It is not "kindly affectioned"; it does not "seek another's, and not its own"; it does not "let the oppressed go free".

     The Seventh of March Speech is a controversial speech about preserving the union, it touched on the issue of slavery.   Webster argues that the issue of slavery was already addressed, he believed that if slavery already existed, it could not be banned and it could not be take root in the new states.

     The North and the South had clear ideas of what each one believed, Webster was trying to preserve the Union by setting aside the issue of slavery.  Webster saw no reason for the North and South to separate, he was appalled by the idea of the secession.  We often feel so right about what we believe, we fight so hard for that goal, that “truth”, that we forget the effect it has on others, we only see what we think is right and forget that what others believe it might be equally important. The North and the South are dependent on each other economically and everything that could be lost because of secession outweighs the benefits of separation.

Revisiting the Constitution: Do Away With the Electoral College

"Indeed, if we were drafting a constitution today, few people would even consider a presidential electoral system like the Electoral College. (Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, in the mid-19th century, characterized it as 'artificial, cumbrous, radically defective and unrepublican.') ".

If  we were to draft the constitution in this time and age it is very unlikely that we would consider a system like the electoral college, our founding fathers did not trust  the citizens to make the right choice when it came time to choosing a president, they feared that the citizens would not be able to chose the best candidate to the presidency due to the  lack of information or knowledge about the candidates.

I agree with professor Alexander Keyssar, no other country in the world has adopted the presidential electoral system.  Why would they? Countries are happy to vote for their candidate of choice where the popular vote is the key ingredient to a fair democratic government.  I think that we should be able to select and choose who we best see fit to run the country.