A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution

by Damon Root

Overview

In this timely and provocative book, Damon Root reveals how Frederick Douglass's fight for an antislavery Constitution helped to shape the course of American history in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640125735
Publisher:	Potomac Books
Publication date:	04/01/2023
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Damon Root is an award-winning legal journalist and the author of Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court. He works as a senior editor and columnist for Reason magazine. Root's writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News, Chicago Sun-Times, Newsweek, New York Post, New York Daily News, New York Press, Washington Times, WallStreetJournal.com, Globe and Mail, and other publications.

Mirron Willis has narrated over 200 audiobooks across various literary genres and has won several Earphone Awards for Excellence and is an Audie Award finalist and winner. Notable works include Ginny Gall by Charlie Smith, The Smokey Dalton Series by Kris Nelscott; My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte; The Long Fall (Booklist, Best of 2009) and others by Walter Mosley; Uncle Tom's Cabin, Elijah of Buxton, The Translator; and Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B Dubois.

In three seasons at the Ensemble Theatre (Houston, Texas), Mirron appeared as JP in What I Learned in Paris, Malcolm X in The Meeting, Henry in Race, and as Countee Cullen in Knock Me a Kiss (2013 Giorgee Award for Best Leading Actor). Other roles include Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry VI Parts 2 & 3, and A Raisin in the Sun with the world-renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has also performed as guest narrator with the Houston Symphony.
Film and TV guest appearances include Criminal Minds, Private Practice, The Exes, Monk, 24, Seinfeld, Cheers, The Parkers, Living Single, E.R., Star Trek, and Independence Day, among others. Mirron resides and records audiobooks on his family's historic ranch in East Texas.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Frederick Douglass’s Constitution    
1. “A Faithful Disciple of William Lloyd Garrison”     
2. “An Anti-slavery Instrument”     
3. “This Hell-Black Judgment of the Supreme Court”     
4. “Men of Color, to Arms!”     
5. “One Nation, One Country, One Citizenship”     
Epilogue: A Legacy of Liberty    
Acknowledgments    
Notes    
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Damon Root has written a meticulously researched celebration of the intellectual legacy of Frederick Douglass. . . . As we continue to debate the legacy of slavery, Root convincingly argues that in reconciling the country’s most profound moral incongruity—that a nation purporting to be a beacon of liberty could be so inextricably rooted in human bondage—Douglass should be mentioned in the same breath as the Founding Fathers, perhaps even more so, as a historical figure who not only championed the ideas that made America great, but in pointing out where it fell short of those values demanded that the country become a better version of itself.”—Radley Balko, investigative journalist at the Washington Post and coauthor of The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South

Radley Balko

Is the Constitution an antislavery ‘glorious liberty document’ or a proslavery ‘agreement with hell’? The antebellum debates between William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass are as relevant today as they were two centuries ago. In this important new book, Damon Root methodologically and accessibly walks you through this formative constitutional debate and shows why Douglass rightfully belongs ‘in the pantheon of American civic philosophers.’”—Josh Blackman, professor of constitutional law at South Texas College of Law Houston

Josh Blackman

Today, once again, the original Constitution is being vilified, as a validation of slavery, by people with disreputable agendas and negligible understanding. Damon Root, who explicates the great document as well as anyone writing today, brings the patience of Job and a noble ally—Frederick Douglass—to the task of refuting this recycled canard. Root and Douglass, like root beer and ice cream, are an irresistible American combination.”—George F. Will

George F. Will