[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1227-S1228]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Remembering Frederick Douglass

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, 200 years ago this month, a man was born into 
slavery in a cabin not far from here in

[[Page S1228]]

Maryland. The child knew his mother only briefly; they were cruelly 
separated when he was young. He knew his father only by the rumors. He 
didn't even know the exact day of his birth. Yes, even his birthday--
for many of us, that foundational aspect of identity--was denied him by 
the cruel master of slavery.
  This slave was whipped and beaten. His days were filled with toil. 
His nights were filled with restless turning on a packed dirt floor. 
But that is not where the story ends--no, it is only the beginning of 
the incredible life of Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, 
orator, and one of the greatest Americans ever to live. As Douglass 
would later write in his memoirs, ``You have seen how a man was made a 
slave. You shall see how a slave was made a man.''
  For all its terrible might--its bloodhounds and its implements of 
torture--slavery was not built to withstand Frederick Douglass, just as 
it was not built to withstand the universal desire for freedom that 
lies within the heart of man.
  Douglass knew that the first step to freedom was education, so he 
taught himself to read in secrecy because slaves were punished for 
learning to read. Around the time he was 12, he got hold of an old 
textbook called ``The Columbian Orator.'' Little did Douglass know that 
around that same time, the same textbook was being studied on the 
Illinois prairie by a young man named Abraham Lincoln. In that 
textbook, Douglass found speeches by George Washington and Benjamin 
Franklin--men who revolted against tyranny to claim their liberty. In 
that book, he also found a fictional dialogue between a slave and his 
master where the master brought forward ``the whole argument in behalf 
of slavery . . . all of which was disposed of by the slave.'' Douglass 
wrote: This exchange ``gave tongue to interesting thoughts of [his] 
soul.'' It kindled his burning conviction that slavery was wrong and he 
must escape it. From that moment on, Douglass was a grave threat to the 
very institution of slavery itself. He was free in his own mind.
  Douglass' journey ``from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of 
freedom'' would go through many dramatic twists and turns before its 
conclusion. When a notorious slave breaker tried to beat him for 
disobeying orders, Douglass wrestled him into submission. He insisted 
on being treated as a man, and from that day forward, he was never 
whipped again.
  Douglass' first attempt at escape was a failure, thwarted at the last 
minute by a betrayal of confidence. He did not fail a second time. In 
1938, traveling in disguise under an assumed identity, Douglass took a 
steamboat north to the blessedness of freedom. At this point in the 
story, you might expect Douglass to fade from history, to enjoy a 
modest and tranquil life with his wife and his children. But no--the 
former slave, who taught himself to read through the words of Cicero 
and Washington, went on to be history's most eloquent witness against 
slavery. He denounced the bloody institution in 1,000 speeches and from 
the pages of his own abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, and he 
denounced slavery firmly from inside the American tradition.
  Like many radical abolitionists, at times Frederick Douglass was 
profoundly ambivalent about his own country. Indeed, there was a time 
in his early adulthood when he affirmatively hated the United States, 
preferring disunion to union with slaveholders. But Frederick Douglass 
later came to a different conclusion about America. When he read the 
Nation's founding documents, he did not find codified defenses of 
slavery; to the contrary, he found that the compromises the Founders 
had made to slavery were meant to undermine that institution over time, 
not to sustain it. What Douglass found in the Founders was quite 
different from what he had expected to find. He later said: Their 
message ``is `We the people'; not we the white people, not even we the 
citizens, not we the privileged class, not we the high, not we the low, 
but we the people.''
  Douglass was an activist, yes, a militant, yes, who led recruiting 
drives for Black soldiers during the Civil War. But for all of his 
righteous anger, he did not want to cast aside the principles of his 
country. Douglass knew that the most powerful antidote to injustice was 
found within the American tradition, with its insistence on natural 
rights for all men.
  Douglass wrote:

       From the first, I saw no chance of bettering the condition 
     of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman 
     and should become a citizen. . . . The liberties of the 
     American people [are] dependent upon the ballot-box, the 
     jury-box, and the cartridge-box; that without these no class 
     of people could live and flourish in this country.

  Frederick Douglass has many lessons to teach us if we are willing to 
listen. I would like to highlight just one more, which I think is 
especially relevant to us today.
  At the end of his famous autobiography, Frederick Douglass contrasted 
two societies: the slaveholder society he was born into and the 
northern society where he was reborn in freedom.
  The slave society he described was built on force and fraud. Its 
religion had been perverted to serve earthly idols. Its families were 
torn apart at the auction block. Its workers toiled to no reward. This 
society had been poisoned by its rejection of the American creed, by 
its insistence that all men are not created equal. Indeed, it had 
become an authoritarian society that policed movement, association, 
even intimacy. And for what? To protect a hideous falsehood.
  The free society Douglass described was different. Here, a man could 
hold an honest job, and he worked because his work was rewarded, not 
because he feared punishment. Here, a runaway slave could make a name 
for himself, rising to a position of esteem in his community through 
his service. Here, a family could put down roots and flourish.
  Those are two very different societies, guided by very different 
beliefs. One is a weak community hiding behind a show of strength. The 
other is a strong and free community with absolutely nothing to hide.
  Today we are blessedly free from the institution of slavery, but our 
communities have their own problems. The American family is in crisis. 
Our prisons are full, and our pews are empty. Heroin and opioids 
enslave millions. Many more are killed before they even get the chance 
to live.
  Yes, we have our own battles to fight. In too many ways, we have 
fallen short of the high principles upon which our Nation was built. 
That ultimately is why the legacy of Frederick Douglass is so very 
important. He implored his generation to heal itself of its greatest 
disease. He calls upon us to do the same.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Young). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, all postcloture time on 
the Branch nomination expire at 4 p.m. today and the Senate vote on the 
nomination with no intervening action or debate. Finally, if confirmed, 
the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and 
the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________