What is the Meaning of The North Star?

So why is the DSA North Star Caucus known as North Star? Why was that name chosen? What does it signify? Evidently these questions arise because its meaning isn’t immediately apparent. Ironic since it is a name deeply rooted in the history of American radicalism, specifically in the struggle of human rights against the despotic claims of property and privilege that is a central fact of the US historical experience. To comprehend that history and legacy a brief outline seems in order.

The name links back to the abolitionist movement of the 19th century and to one of its greatest figures; Frederick Douglass. Self liberated from slavery, Douglass rose to become, as orator and writer, the foremost public voice of the movement to abolish slavery in the US. More, he became a key leader in shifting that movement from a posture of moral suasion to one of active political engagement, which led it to ultimate victory in the fiery trial of the US Civil War. The name is not meant to simply associate the caucus with his memory. It is meant to embrace the political lessons that Douglass’ career and example have for us in the present.

When Douglass first began his career in the Abolitionist movement, he gained the sponsorship and support of William Lloyd Garrison, then the preeminent publicist of the movement through the pages of his newspaper “The Liberator”. Garrison preached a brand of abolitionism that rejected political engagement as collaboration with slavery, famously labeling both the US Constitution and the Union as "A covenant with death and an agreement with hell", calling for the repudiation of the first and the dissolution of the second. Initially Douglass embraced these views as his own and acted as an orthodox Garrisonian, albeit with the distinction that he believed the crime of slavery could only be properly understood from the perspective of the enslaved. Under the impact of events, however, his view of both politics and the Constitution would begin to shift.

In part this would be due to his experiences in Great Britain and Ireland where he spent two years in the mid 1840’s. This was both to build international support for the movement and necessitated by the public notice generated by the publication of his first autobiography, which putat risk of being kidnapped by slave catchers and returned to bondage.

While in Ireland during the Potato Famine he came to see the struggle for abolition in the context of a universal struggle for human liberty and dignity. As he wrote to Garrison at the time:

> "I see much here to remind me of my former condition, and I confess I should be ashamed to lift up my voice against American slavery, but that I know the cause of humanity is one the world over. He who really and truly feels for the American slave, cannot steel his heart to the woes of others; and he who thinks himself an abolitionist, yet cannot enter into the wrongs of others, has yet to find a true foundation for his anti-slavery faith."

Douglass was able to return to the US when sympathizers and supporters were able to collect enough money to purchase his liberty from his former “master”, giving him the legal status of a free person and freeing him from the ever-present shadow of the slave catcher. However, it also occasioned his first serious disagreement with his Garrisonian comrades. In as much as they viewed any political engagement as an unacceptable concession to slavery, many likewise saw the purchase of his freedom in the same light. Douglass, understandably, could not agree.

> “Some of my uncompromising anti-slavery friends in this country failed to see the wisdom of this arrangement, and were not pleased that I consented to it, even by my silence. They thought it a violation of anti-slavery principles—conceding a right of property in man—and a wasteful expenditure of money. On the other hand, viewing it simply in the light of a ransom, or as money extorted by a robber, and my liberty of more value than one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, I could not see either a violation of the laws of morality, or those of economy, in the transaction.”

And:

> “I felt that I had a duty to perform—and that was, to labor and suffer with the oppressed in my native land. Considering, therefore, all the circumstances—the fugitive slave bill included—I think the very best thing was done in letting Master Hugh \[Auld\] have the hundred and fifty pounds sterling and leaving me free to return to my appropriate field of labor.”

It was at this time that Douglass, with the backing of his British supporters, began publishing his own newspaper; The North Star. The title referenced the North Star in the constellation of the Big Dipper as pointing the way to freedom for those fleeing bondage. The paper’s motto read: "Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no Color—God is the Father of us all, and all we are Brethren,"a further sign of Douglass’ broadening horizon.

Perhaps inevitably, Douglass’ expansive, inclusive and militant vision brought him into conflict with Garrison, leading to a final break. Sometime between 1847 and 1851, possibly influenced by Lysander Spooner’s essay“ The Unconstitutionality of Slavery”, Douglass came to reject Garrison’s view of both political engagement and the Constitution, coming to see both as powerful and necessary weapons in the fight for liberation. 

Here is the crux of Frederick Douglass’ legacy to subsequent generations engaged in the long struggle for human dignity in the face of all oppression and exploitation: the]fusion of inspiring aspiration with practical realism grounded in democratic values--values that recognize that the liberation of the oppressed can only be accomplished by their own will and effort, a conviction that reached its apogee in Douglass’ unyielding advocacy for enlisting Black men within the ranks of the Union Army. This combination of aspiration and realism was perhaps most aptly expressed in Douglass’ 1875 memorial to Abraham Lincoln:

> “I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful coöperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”

This is the legacy that informs our vision of Democratic Socialism. One that neither denies or shrinks from the complexity and contradictions of the material challenges involved. One that affirms that a
people’s liberation can only be the work of their own hands.

Walter Reeves