No property in man
Subtitle: slavery and antislavery at the nation's founding
By: Sean Wilentz
Series: The Nathan I. Huggins lectures; Nathan I. Huggins lectures
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 350
ISBN-13: 9780674972223
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: Constitutional history; Law and legislation; Slavery; Antislavery movements
Description: Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of racial slavery. Some historians have charged that slaveholders actually enshrined human bondage at the nation's founding. Sean Wilentz shares the dismay but sees the Constitution and slavery differently. Although the proslavery side won important concessions, he asserts, antislavery impulses also influenced the framers' work. Far from covering up a crime against humanity, the Constitution restricted slavery's legitimacy under the new national government. In time, that limitation would open the way for the creation of an antislavery politics that led to Southern secession, the Civil War, and Emancipation. Wilentz's controversial reconsideration upends orthodox views of the Constitution. He describes the document as a tortured paradox that abided slavery without legitimizing it. This paradox lay behind the great political battles that fractured the nation over the next seventy years. As Southern Fire-eaters invented a proslavery version of the Constitution, antislavery advocates, including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, proclaimed an antislavery version based on the framers' refusal to validate property in man. No Property in Man invites fresh debate about the political and legal struggles over slavery that began during the Revolution and concluded with the Confederacy's defeat. It drives straight to the heart of the most contentious and enduring issue in all of American history.--
Notes: Series taken from half title.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Slavery, property, and emancipation in Revolutionary America; title: The federal convention and the curse of heaven; title: Slavery, antislavery, and the struggle for ratification; title: To the Missouri Crisis; title: Antislavery, the Constitution, and the coming of the Civil War.