The Frederick Douglas Game

The Frederick Douglass Game introduces you to a time and place when calls for an end to slavery were growing louder and rebuttals in defense of slavery were becoming more angry and defiant. This was America circa 1845. 

Debates focused on the intellectual and cultural clashes between the Defenders of the Constitution — the entrenched, respectable defenders of American slavery — and the Abolitionists —  a growing determined movement calling for slavery’s immediate and universal end.
 
The question facing the country in 1845 was not a civil war — which was unimaginable at the time — but whether abolitionist critics of slavery were legitimate. At that time, many pointed to the U.S. Constitution and its clear protection of a slaveholder's power, such as the Constitution's assertion that fugitive slaves must be returned and that the federal government could not do anything about slavery for 20 years. Are Americans accountable to the Constitution or to a “higher law”?

The Defenders of the Constitution faction included John C. Calhoun, the Auld family of Maryland (who legally owned the fugitive slave Frederick Douglass), Henry Clay, Samuel Morse and Thomas Jefferson, who was paradoxically both against slavery and against the government ending it. Can you think of others?
 
Meanwhile, the growing abolitionist movement found fertile ground for its ideas in the pews and pulpits of America. Religious leaders — as would be the case in the Civil Rights Era a century later — formed the backbone of the movement. Women were also at the vanguard, organizing meetings, raising money, 

Abolitionists included Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, the Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, Sojourner Truth, and the Grimke Sisters, who scandalously spoke in public to “mixed” (male and female) audiences, which was previously unknown in the United States. Can you think of others?
 
Others who voiced opinions on the issue, both for and against slavery, included Edgar Allen Poe, Horace Greeley, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams and Fanny Kemble. Use your online research skills to identify still more.

Playing the Game

1) Pick a historical anti-slavery activist from the list above or this extensive list.

2) Research your person of choice — biographical information, their role in the debate over slavery, things they wrote, things they said.

3) Compose a script in which you step into the person's shoes and speak for them. Think and write in terms of the first-person "I" — imagine yourself addressing an audience, introducing yourself and making your feelings known about slavery, either for or against. 

4) Be persuasive. State your case with passion. Try to win over followers to your cause: either the need to preserve the "curious institution" of slavery for all time —  or the need to bury it in the dust bin of history forever.

5) Attend the Town Hall Meeting on Slavery on Sept. 17. Be prepared to address the meeting and state your case for 3-4 minutes. Remember, to win over an audience, you must present yourself with professional poise, speak in a strong and convincing voice. Remember, too, that the only way to do that is to prepare your speech in advance. Write in clear and compact prose that will lend itself to speaking. Write our your speech as if it might also be encountered in print form (like in a blog post, hint, hint).

6) KEY POST: Write a substantial blog post based on your research. (This is why writing out a script for the oral presentation would be a good idea!) Make it 500 words minimum. This will be graded separately — so make it special! Due: Sept. 19.