How did the anti-slavery movement use the Declaration of Independence to attack slavery?

0:03We in the 21st century think very much of the declaration of independence as like this epochal document, like, one of the most important things. A lot of American in fact, equate it with the constitution. They come out of the same exact time period, where, of course, there's 13 years between the declaration and the constitution. But Americans prior to the Civil War didn't really think about the declaration like that.

0:29The declaration was important. It was a important document, but it was the constitution that was the document around which American politics revolved. The declaration is this important symbol of our independence. It's not really until the abolitionist movement really picks up seri esteem in the early 19th century, and abolitionists begin using the declaration for their own purposes, and that really begins to take on some of the meaning that it has today. That's because of the two main documents of the founding in the United States. The declaration is the only one that makes this broad claim about human freedom, and human liberty, and human equality, the constitution doesn't. You can certainly read into the constitution an anti-slavery purpose, but that takes a little work. You get a work at it. But the declaration says from the jump, ''We hold these truths to be self evident," etc.

1:28Abolitionists take a declaration, they use it for their own purposes. They use it to articulate a narrative of the United States as being rooted in human freedom and basic human equality. Lincoln, in particular, does make this part of the center of his anti-slavery political appeal in the 1850s, especially as he's making his way to the top of national politics. Lincoln is saying that this is the basis for our government, this is the basis for our country, and that renders it incompatible with slavery. Even if we're not going to abolish slavery immediately, even if we're just looking to the eventual extinction of slavery, it is simply the case that the freedom articulated in this document cannot coexist with slavery and slavery has to go at some point. I think for Douglas, the declaration does help him link himself up with the founders and think about the founders in more expansive terms,

2:27along with this view of the Constitution as a charter for liberty, allows him to repurpose the founders, the framers, not as defenders of the status quo, but people whose aspirations were for freedom, whose aspirations were for a society free of slavery. My view, I think this is all very political and strategic, but it's also very persuasive. It does speak to the role of the founders and of the Constitution and the American political imagination. That part of making an argument to the public is aligning yourself with the people who wrote the thing in the first place. It's through the Civil War. You see this in the Gettysburg Address especially in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, where the declaration really does become the central document. It is the thing that represents what the United States is. That is because of its association with the anti-slavery struggle,

3:26of its use as an ideological weapon against slavery, and how the anti-slavery crusade, very quickly, it becomes part of the War for Union.