Forthcoming: Benjamin Fagan, Frederick Douglass's Newspapers (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

 Forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press:

Benjamin Fagan, Auburn University, Frederick Douglass's Newspapers (2026). 

Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

The first book to focus on the newspapers edited by Frederick Douglass and their impact on Black organizing.

A robust body of work has established the importance of print in general, and newspapers in particular, to African American culture in the 1800s. Such work regularly acknowledges Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) as one of the most influential newspaper editors of the nineteenth century, a judgment that Douglass and many of his contemporaries shared. But while recent scholarship has continued to expand our understanding of Douglass’s life and work, his newspapers remain largely understudied. Frederick Douglass’s Newspapers is the first book that explores the full range of Douglass’s periodicals.

Benjamin Fagan traces the making and impact of the four newspapers edited by Douglass: the North Star (1847–1851), Frederick Douglass’ Paper (1851–1860), Douglass’ Monthly (1858–1863), and the New National Era (1870–1874). Fagan highlights how Douglass and his co-workers—which included Martin R. Delany, James McCune Smith, William C. Neil, and Douglass’s daughter Rosetta Douglass, among others—practiced versions of Black organizing as they made his newspapers. By teasing out the inner workings of Douglass’s newspapers, Fagan explores the complex and often messy practices of Black organizing that made these publications possible.

In doing so, this book places Douglass’s newspapers at the center of the story of Black organizing in the nineteenth century. Douglass’s newspapers not only offered examples of how to organize for Black readers across the country, but he and his co-workers also participated in a variety of other kinds of Black organizations. Writers for Douglass’s papers put such experiences into print, and stories and lessons of Black organizing filled the pages of Douglass’s newspapers. They covered a variety of issues: abolitionism, school integration, politics both domestic and international, the Civil War, and the burgeoning Black labor movement, among others. Fagan’s close examination of the making of Douglass’s newspapers as well as what appeared in their pages chronicles how his publications were simultaneously examples and archives of Black organizing.

 

Johnson on Frederick Douglass: D.C. Recorder of Deeds

Randall K. Johnson, University of Missouri, Kansas City, School of Law, is publishing Frederick Douglass: D.C. Recorder of Deeds in volume 28 of The Green Bag (2026). Here is the abstract.

Frederick Douglass' surprise nomination, as the first Black D.C. Recorder of Deeds, represented yet another career milestone for the most photographed U.S. citizen of the nineteenth century. As head of the local agency responsible for registering property interests, Douglass played an important role in advancing local economic development, mostly by letting the world know who owns what real estate within the geographic boundaries of D.C. This point is underscored by the fact that Douglass earned the second highest salary in the U.S. federal government, which some have estimated to be as high as $40 per work day in 1886 dollars. My essay, further, builds upon this analysis by focusing on a third indicator of importance: the type, quality and quantity of local press coverage that Douglass received during his time as the D.C. Recorder (1881 to 1886).

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

ICYMI: Williams on Blasting Reproach and All-Pervading Light: Frederick Douglass's Aspirational American Exceptionalism @BYULaw

ICYMI: Lucy Williams, Brigham Young University Law School, has published Blasting Reproach and All-Pervading Light: Frederick Douglass’s Aspirational American Exceptionalism at 9 American Political Thought 369 (2020). Here is the abstract.

Some scholars critique American exceptionalism as a proud, uncritical orientation. In this article, however, I argue that Frederick Douglass, an outspoken social critic, qualifies as an American exceptionalist thinker. I first identify and theorize two modes of exceptionalist rhetoric: accomplished exceptionalism, which is self-celebratory and largely uncritical, and aspirational exceptionalism, which is self-critical and reflective. I then provide a close reading of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” to show how Douglass employs aspirational rhetorical techniques. Finally, I discuss the benefits of reading Douglass as an exceptionalist thinker and suggest that his aspirational rhetoric activates reflective and progressive modes of American citizenship.

The full text is not available for download from SSRN.

Balkin and Levinson on Frederick Douglass as Constitutionalist @jackbalkin @UTexasLaw @YaleLawSch

Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School, and Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School, are publishing Frederick Douglass as Constitutionalist in the Maryland Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Frederick Douglass is an important symbol in American constitutional memory, cited in U.S. Supreme Court opinions and invoked by people with very different political ideologies. In this essay, we explore Douglass's constitutional philosophy by contrasting his views about fidelity to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law with those of Abraham Lincoln and those of John Brown, who led the 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia to incite an armed revolt against slavery. Douglass's views about the U.S. Constitution changed over the years, and were often in tension with each other, but he was at best an ambivalent constitutionalist. In many respects his views about the Constitution were closer to those of John Brown, who believed that violence was necessary to redeem constitutional government, than those of Abraham Lincoln, who advocated obedience to law in his Springfield Lyceum speech and who accepted slavery as the price of constitutional government in his First Inaugural address. Although politicians and judges today may prefer a sanitized version of Frederick Douglass, his actual views about how faithful one should be to an unjust constitution raise important questions for us today.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Knowles-Gardner on Arriving as an Answer to the "The Question of Questions": How Lysander Spooner's Legal Education Influenced His (and Frederick Douglass's) Belief That Slavery Was Unconstitutional @KnowlesGardner @InstFreeSpeech @GeorgetownJLPP

Helen J. Knowles-Gardner, Institute for Free Speech, is publishing Arriving at an Answer to the ‘The Question of Questions’: How Lysander Spooner’s Legal Education Influenced His (and Frederick Douglass’s) Belief That Slavery Was Unconstitutional in volume 22 of the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy. Here is the abstract.

Numerous scholars have examined the reasons why Frederick Douglass shifted his position on the relationship between slavery and the Constitution (from embracing the Garrisonian condemnation of the document as a "covenant with death, and an agreement with hell" to embracing the position that slavery was unconstitutional) This article builds on that existing scholarship – including my own previous writings about Lysander Spooner’s interpretive philosophy – by examining Douglass’s “change of opinion,” the influence of Spooner, and why Spooner came to embrace the position that Douglass ultimately found so persuasive. Why did Spooner arrive at (and then write an exceptionally detailed two-part treatise explaining) the conclusion that not only was the Constitution anti-slavery but also that slavery itself was unconstitutional? I argue that a detailed analysis of Spooner’s legal education helps us to answer that question.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Coffee on A Radical Revolution in Thought: Frederick Douglass on the Slave's Perspective on Republican Freedom @KCL_Law

Alan Coffee, King's College London, Dickson Poon School of Law, is publishing A Radical Revolution in Thought: Frederick Douglass on the Slave's Perspective on Republican Freedom in Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition's Popular Heritage (Bruno Leipold, Karma Nabulsi and Stuart White, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press) (forthcoming).

While the image of the slave as the antithesis of the freeman is central to republican freedom, it is striking to note that slaves themselves have not contributed to how this condition is understood. The result is a one-sided conception of both freedom and slavery, which leaves republicanism unable to provide an equal and robust protection for historically outcast people. I draw on the work of Frederick Douglass – long overlooked as a significant contributor to republican theory – to show one way why this is so. Focusing the American Revolution, the subsequent republican government established new political institutions to maintain the collective interests of the whole population. The political revolution was held in place by processes of public reason that reflected the values and ideas of the people that had rebelled. The black population, however, had not been part of this revolution. After emancipation, black Americans were required to accept terms of citizenship that had already been defined, leaving them socially dominated, subject to the prejudices and biases within the prevailing ideas of public discourse. Douglass argued that republican freedom under law is always dependent on a more fundamental revolution, that he calls a ‘radical revolution in thought’, in which the entire system of social norms and practices are reworked together by members of all constituent social groups – women and men, black and white, rich and poor – so that it reflects a genuinely collaborative achievement. Only then can we begin the republican project of contestatory freedom as independence or non-domination that today’s republicans take for granted.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

ICYMI: Finkelman on Frederick Douglass's Constitution @PaulFinkelman @GratzCollege

ICYMI: Paul Finkelman, Gratz College, has published Frederick Douglas's Constitution: From Garrisonian Abolitionist to Lincoln Republican at 81 Missouri Law Review 1 (2016). Here is the abstract.

This Article explores how the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass was both a constitutional actor and a constitutional theorist. Unlike most constitutional actors, Douglass was not a judge, lawyer, professor, or an elected official. Nevertheless, throughout much of his life, Douglass shaped the Constitution through his actions. He was also shaped by the Constitution as he went from being a fugitive slave – and thus an “object” of the Constitution – to being a free citizen and an appointed officeholder. He became a constitutional theorist who brought his theories into action through his speeches, writings, and activities as an abolitionist, as an antislavery activist, and then as a spokesman for African Americans during the Civil War. This Article provides insights into antebellum constitutional thought and the background to the Fourteenth Amendment. This Article also explores our understanding of the Constitution and its relationship to slavery through the lens of Frederick Douglass. First, the Article looks at how the Constitution impacted Douglass and how Douglass was himself a “constitutional actor,” even though he held no public office and was not even considered a U.S. citizen under the holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford. For example, Douglass was a constitutional actor when he escaped from slavery – and thus came under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution; when he married in New York but was still a fugitive from Maryland; when he applied for, and received, a copyright for his first autobiography, even though he was a fugitive slave at the time; and when he left the United States for Great Britain without a passport. This Article also explores Douglass’s constitutional theories and understandings and how he used the Constitution to oppose slavery. I argue, in part, that his understanding of the Constitution and his approach to constitutional interpretation changed as his life circumstances changed. Thus, when he returned from England, he was a free man because British friends had purchased his liberty. This led him to a new understanding of how to approach the Constitution and how to fight slavery under the Constitution. While essentially a work of legal history, this Article also offers ways of understanding constitutional theory and the elements of being a constitutional actor. The Article also raises issues of interstate comity and the recognition in one state of a status created in another. While not explicitly stated – because this is a work of legal history – this Article obviously has implications for modern issues surrounding marriage equality, child-custody based on interstate recognitions of status changes, the interstate recognition of gender transitions, and the legal rights of non-citizens within the United States.

Download the article here.

Finkelman on Frederick Douglass's Constitution

Paul Finkelman, University of Pittsburgh, School of Law, Albany Law School, Government Law Center, has published Frederick Douglas's [sic] Constitution: From Garrisonian Abolitionist to Lincoln Republican at 81 Missouri Law Review 1 (2016). Here is the abstract.

This Article explores how the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass was both a constitutional actor and a constitutional theorist. Unlike most constitutional actors, Douglass was not a judge, lawyer, professor, or an elected official. Nevertheless, throughout much of his life, Douglass shaped the Constitution through his actions. He was also shaped by the Constitution as he went from being a fugitive slave – and thus an “object” of the Constitution – to being a free citizen and an appointed officeholder. He became a constitutional theorist who brought his theories into action through his speeches, writings, and activities as an abolitionist, as an antislavery activist, and then as a spokesman for African Americans during the Civil War. This Article provides insights into antebellum constitutional thought and the background to the Fourteenth Amendment. This Article also explores our understanding of the Constitution and its relationship to slavery through the lens of Frederick Douglass. First, the Article looks at how the Constitution impacted Douglass and how Douglass was himself a “constitutional actor,” even though he held no public office and was not even considered a U.S. citizen under the holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford. For example, Douglass was a constitutional actor when he escaped from slavery – and thus came under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution; when he married in New York but was still a fugitive from Maryland; when he applied for, and received, a copyright for his first autobiography, even though he was a fugitive slave at the time; and when he left the United States for Great Britain without a passport. This Article also explores Douglass’s constitutional theories and understandings and how he used the Constitution to oppose slavery. I argue, in part, that his understanding of the Constitution and his approach to constitutional interpretation changed as his life circumstances changed. Thus, when he returned from England, he was a free man because British friends had purchased his liberty. This led him to a new understanding of how to approach the Constitution and how to fight slavery under the Constitution. While essentially a work of legal history, this Article also offers ways of understanding constitutional theory and the elements of being a constitutional actor. The Article also raises issues of interstate comity and the recognition in one state of a status created in another. While not explicitly stated – because this is a work of legal history – this Article obviously has implications for modern issues surrounding marriage equality, child-custody based on interstate recognitions of status changes, the interstate recognition of gender transitions, and the legal rights of non-citizens within the United States.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

ICYMI: Lee on The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel

ICYMI:

Julia Sun-Joo Lee has published The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel (Oxford University Press, 2012). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Conceived as a literary form to aggressively publicize the abolitionist cause in the United States, the African American slave narrative remains a powerful and illuminating demonstration of America's dark history. Yet the genre's impact extended far beyond the borders of the U.S. The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel investigates the shaping influence of writings by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other former slaves on British fiction in the years between the Abolition Act and the Emancipation Proclamation. Julia Sun-Joo Lee argues that novelists such as Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens integrated into their works generic elements of the slave narrative-from the emphasis on literacy as a tool of liberation, to the teleological journey from slavery to freedom, to the ethics of resistance over submission. It contends that Victorian novelists used these tropes in an attempt to access the slave narrative's paradigm of resistance, illuminate the transnational dimension of slavery, and articulate Britain's role in the global community. Through a deft use of disparate sources, Lee reveals how the slave narrative becomes part of the textual network of the English novel, making visible how black literary, as well as economic, production contributed to British culture.