Framers of the constitution Quote by Don E. Fehrenbacher

Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no…

— Frederick Douglass

“while the framers of the United States Constitution were ashamed of slavery and used euphemisms in place of the term "slave", the authors of…

— C.L. Gammon

The Constitutional framers were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink…

— Frederick Douglass

Even if the Constitution of the United States had intended to recognize slavery, as a constitutional state institution, such intended recognition would have failed…

— Lysander Spooner

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other…

— Frederick Douglass

But you answer, that the Constitution recognizes property in slaves. It would be sufficient, then, to reply, that this constitutional recognition must be void,…

— William H. Seward

The framers of the constitution employed words in their natural sense; and, where they are plain and clear, resort to collateral aids to interpretation…

— Melville Fuller

“The protection of our Constitution, and, moreover, of written law itself, has been laughed to scorn by traitors in black dresses who have the…

— Joseph Befumo

“The framers were realists; they recognized that the best constitution in the world could be distorted and destroyed by men determined to do so.”

— John Eidsmoe

The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.

— Beau Willimon

“How could those who wrote the Constitution possibly understand its meaning better than those who had the experience of observing and participating in its…

— Jack N. Rakove

It is perfectly clear, in the first place, that the constitution of the United States did not, of itself, create or establish slavery as…

— Lysander Spooner