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Enlarge this image A portrait of 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass is unveiled at the Maryland governor's residence in Annapolis on Sept. 15, 2014. Brian Witte/AP In 1856, Frederick Douglass made a decision. He was an antislavery activist then, hoping to advance his cause by supporting a candidate in that fall's presidential election. Douglass' endorsement mattered. He was famous — a man who had escaped slavery to become an influential speaker and writer. He was a newspaper editor, operating Frederick Douglass' Paper out of an office in Rochester, N.Y. The power of his words could be measured by the efforts to silence him: White men with clubs and stones once chased him off a stage in Indiana, while his autobiography was banned in the slave states of the South. In 1856, leaders of Mobile, Ala., banished two booksellers who dared to offer it, saying the men risked execution if they stayed in town. Deciding how best to use his influence, Douglass faced a classic American political question: Should he vote for a radical or a moderate? He could support the big change he believed in — abolition of slavery — or settle for less sweeping change from a candidate better positioned to win. Democrats in 2020 may find his dilemma familiar: They are scanning their large field, asking who can bring enough change, and also who can win. (The choice is not necessarily either-or; in 2016, Republicans chose the candidate who promised the biggest change, who also won.) Come November's general election, voters will have third-party options too. So it is instructive to observe how one of the greatest figures in American history wrestled with his decision in 1856 — especially because he changed his mind. We can begin the story soon after he escaped slavery in the 1830s. He became a protégé of William Lloyd Garrison, a fierce, white, antislavery editor based in Boston. Garrison declared the U.S. Constitution corrupt because it accommodated slavery. He denounced the government and refused to take part in electoral politics. Douglass initially agreed; as late as 1848, he was attending meetings of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, which endorsed "No Union with Slave-Holders," meaning it would be better to break up the country than remain allied with the slaveholding South. But by the late 1840s, Douglass was taking a step that the radical Garrison rejected: He was beginning to support political candidates, so long as they favored abolition. This meant he never supported a major-party candidate; the two major parties, Whigs and Democrats, both appealed for the votes of Southern slave owners. He backed third-party candidates with no chance of winning. Douglass began the 1856 presidential campaign the same way, promoting Gerrit Smith, a New York abolitionist and reformer. But he was taking notice of another option:
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