Frederick Douglass, classical liberal.

• Author: Buccola, Nicholas
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

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Damon Root did a free job drawing from my book and other sources to reveal that Frederick Douglass' thought occasionally was "suspiciously libertarian" ("Frederick Douglass, Classical Liberal," August/September). But one of the central conclusions of my book, The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty (New York University Press), is that Douglass' thought defies such easy categorization. Indeed, he reminds us that complex political problems often require us to abandon the comforts of ideological purity. Lest readers come away with the impression that categorizing Douglass as a "classical liberal" or "libertarian" is without any difficulties, allow me to raise a couple of problems.

First, libertarians might find some of Douglass' writings on the "The Labor Question" to be suspiciously progressive: "That society is a failure in which the large majority of its members, without any direct fault of their own, would, if any accidental circumstances deprived them for a month of the opportunity of earning regular wages, be dependent upon private or public charity for daily bread." We could quibble about how Douglass' ideas on the...