This chapter looks at Frederick Douglass’s thoughts on natural law, which returned to a closer conformity with teachings predominant in the tradition of classical liberal political philosophy. It examines Douglass’s third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, to accomplish this task. Douglass’s thoughts on the operation of natural law yielded a realistic conclusion that great wrongs are in the nature of the powerful. It concludes that Douglass thought tyranny had its own costs under natural law: that tyranny breeds arrogance and insecurity among tyrants, which naturally provokes resistance for their subjects, and that this resistance over time tends to destabilize the regimes that perpetrate it. Douglass posits that when resistance is guided by prudent leadership that combines the appeal of moral principal, patriotism, and practical interest, it is bound to produce durable reforms.
Introduction: The Transatlantic Slave Trade, Part I
