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While a guest at Douglass’s home in Rochester, New York in February 1858, John Brown authored a constitution as he was planning his raid on Harper’s Ferry. It was adopted at a convention Brown held in Canada on May 8-10, 1858. Twenty months later, Brown led a small raiding party to seize the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to initiate a slave revolt in the area. U.S. Marines killed ten of the raiders, and another seven, including Brown, were tried and executed, while five escaped.
Responding to a query in 1874, Douglass wrote that Brown’s Constitution “is not for sale.”
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
Autograph Note Signed, September 16, 1874, Washington, D.C. 1 p., 5 x 3 in.
Inventory #27945
Price: $39,000
Frederick Douglass originally supported Brown’s plans but later disavowed the raid on Harpers Ferry for practical considerations. In his 1892 autobiography, Douglass wrote that when Brown decided to target Harpers Ferry, he told Brown that “he was going into a perfect steel-trap, and that once in he would never get out alive; that he would be surrounded at once and escape would be impossible.” However, Brown “was not to be shaken by anything I could say....”[1]
Beginning in 1860, Douglass often lectured on John Brown. During such lectures in Washington, D.C. and throughout New England in November and December of 1873, Douglass said, “Few could seem to comprehend that freedom to the slaves was his only object…. the most curious and contradictory versions of the affair were industriously circulated, and those which were the least rational and true seemed to command the readiest belief… To such it was nothing less than a wide-sweeping rebellion to overthrow the existing government, and construct another upon its ruins, with Brown for its President and Commander-in-Chief; the proof of this was found in the old man’s carpet-bag in the shape of a constitution for a new Republic…” Douglass countered by underplaying its purpose, claiming that Brown’s constitution was merely intended “to govern the conduct of his men in the mountains.”
Someone apparently inquired about purchasing the provisional constitution after hearing or reading of Douglass saying that “Brown’s constitution for the government of the insurrectionary republic was written at his [Douglass’s] house in Rochester, and the speaker still possessed the original draft.”[2]
Complete Transcript
The Constitution written by John Brown at my house, is not for sale.
Fredk Douglass.
Washington D.C. Sept 16, 1874
Historical Background
While a guest at the home of Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, in February 1858, John Brown drafted a “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States.” The constitution was to govern an area of the mountainous regions of the mid-Atlantic states. It featured a unicameral legislature of 5 to 10 at large members.
Brown presented the provisional constitution, consisting of 48 articles, to a secret convention held in Chatham, Canada West (Ontario), from May 8-10, 1858. A group of 12 whites and 34 African Americans met at the British Methodist Episcopal Church, and Brown laid out his plans for a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.
The convention read and discussed the constitution by article, only one of which raised any objections. Carriage maker George J. Reynolds of Sandusky, Ohio, who was of mixed African American and Native American ancestry, moved to strike out the 46th article, which declared, “The foregoing articles shall not be construed so as in any way to encourage the overthrow of any State government, or of the general government of the United States, and look to no dissolution of the Union, but simply to amendment and repeal.” After debate, only Reynolds voted to strike out that article. After a discussion of the remaining two articles, “the constitution as a whole was then unanimously adopted.”
The convention elected Brown as commander-in-chief by acclamation and Kagi as Secretary of war in the same manner. They also elected Richard Realf as Secretary of State, Owen Brown as Treasurer, and Gill as Secretary of the Treasury. After Thomas M. Kinnard declined to serve as president and J. W. Loguen sent word that he would not serve, if elected, the convention appointed a committee of 15, led by John Brown, to fill all other offices and adjourned.
Curiously, the provisional constitution was not distributed at Harpers Ferry, and there is no record of precisely how and when Brown planned to use it.
When Brown was on trial for treason in November 1859, his defense attorney, Samuel Chilton, produced the provisional constitution to show that Brown’s actions were not treasonous but rather evidence of insanity. According to one law professor who examined Brown’s constitution, he was an example of a “fringe constitutionalist,” a person who “behaves like a rule breaker, but speaks like a law follower.”[3]
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) was an orator, journalist, abolitionist, and distinguished African-American leader. Born a slave in Tuckahoe, Maryland, as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, he assumed the name Douglass after he escaped from slavery in 1838. That year, he married Anna Murray (1813-1882), and they had five children. In 1841, Douglass successfully addressed a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society convention and was employed as its agent. He wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845 to document his experiences and sufferings and to silence those who contended that a man of his abilities could not have been a slave. Douglass soon became a noted anti-slavery orator and supporter of women’s rights, lecturing in both the United States and England. He attended the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights and signed its Declaration of Sentiments. Douglass edited his own newspaper, The North Star, for several years. In 1855, he published his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom. During the Civil War, he was instrumental in advocating for African-American combat units, and in raising troops. He fought for passage of the Thirteenth (Abolition), Fourteenth (Equal Protection), and Fifteenth (Voting Rights) Amendments, through testimony to Congress, reports to the President, and regular appearances on the lecture circuit. In 1872, Douglass was nominated for vice-president by the Equal Rights Party on a ticket headed by Victoria Woodhull. Douglass was the first African American to serve in important federal posts, including Marshal of the District of Columbia (1877-1881), Recorder of Deeds for Washington D.C. (1881-1886), and Minister-General to Haiti (1889-1891). In 1881, he published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, his third and final autobiography, which he revised in 1892. After the death of his wife Anna, Douglass married white suffragist Helen Pitts (1838-1903) in 1884, a marriage his children opposed.
Condition: Fine; few small stains.
[1] Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself (Boston: De Wolfe & Fiske Co., 1892), 389-390.
[2] The St. Louis Republican (MO), Nov. 20, 1873, 1:6. See also Lowell Daily Citizen & News (MA), Nov. 25, 1873, 2:1; The North Star (Danville, VT), Nov. 28, 1873, 2:3; Boston Cultivator (MA), Nov. 29, 1873, 3:6.Ægis and Gazette (Worcester, MA), Nov. 29, 1873, 2:5; The Washington Reporter (PA), Dec. 31, 1873, 3:2.
Philanthropist and collecteor Frederick W. Beinecke (1887-1971) donated an autograph manuscript in Brown’s hand of the provisional constitution to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library he founded at Yale University. It is unclear when and from whom Beinecke acquired it and whether it is the “original draft” owned by.
[3] Robert L. Tsai, “John Brown’s Constitution,” Boston College Law Review 51 (Jan. 2010), 154. See Robert L. Tsai, America’s Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 83-117.
