The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? presents one of the most important and intellectually rigorous speeches delivered by Frederick Douglass.

Delivered in Glasgow in 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, this address confronts a fierce controversy within the abolitionist movement itself: Was the U.S. Constitution a slaveholding compact, or a document that—rightly interpreted—could be used to destroy slavery?

With clarity, moral force, and legal precision, Douglass argues that the Constitution contains no explicit guarantee of property in man and that its principles—justice, liberty, and the general welfare—stand fundamentally opposed to slavery. Rejecting calls for disunion, he contends instead for political action, constitutional interpretation, and the use of lawful power to bring slavery to an end.

This speech reveals Douglass not only as a powerful orator, but as a serious constitutional thinker. It remains a landmark text in the history of abolition, American political thought, and the struggle to reconcile law with justice.

A vital primary document from one of the nineteenth century’s greatest champions of human freedom.