se 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, it is,
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."[125]

It was charged by some persons that for financial reasons Mr. Douglass
changed his views and residence; that the Garrisonians were poor; but
that Gerrit Smith was rich; and that he assisted Mr. Douglass in
establishing the "North Star," a weekly paper. But Mr. Douglass was a
man of boldness of thought and independence of character; and whatever
the motives were which led him away from his early friends he at least
deserved credit for possessing the courage necessary to such a change.
But Mr. Douglass was not the only anti-slavery man who imagined that
the Constitution was an anti-slavery instrument. This was the error of
Charles Sumner. Slavery was as legal as the right of the Government to
coin money. As has been shown already, it was recognized and protected
by law when the British sceptre ruled the colonies; it was recognized
by all the courts during the Confederacy; it was acknowledged as a
legal fact by the Treaty of Paris of 1782, and of Ghent in 1814: the
gentlemen who framed the Constitution fixed the basis of
representation in Congress upon three fifths of the slaves; and gave
the owners of slaves a fugitive slave law, at the birth of the
nation, by which to hunt their slaves in all the States and
Territories of North America. But Mr. Douglass lived long enough to
see that he was wrong and Mr. Garrison right; that the dissolution of
the Union was the only way to free his race. In his way he did his
part as faithfully and as honestly as any of his brethren in either
one of the anti-slavery parties.

Having established a reputation as an orator in England and America;
and having lifted over the tangled path of his fugitive brethren the
unerring, friendly "North Star," he now turned his attention to
debating. It was a matter of regret that two such powerful and
accomplished orators as Frederick Douglass and Samuel Ringgold Ward
should have taken up so much precious time in splitting hairs on the
constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery. Perhaps it did
good. It certainly did the men good. It was an education to th