No property in man: slavery and antislavery at the nation's founding PDF
Preview No property in man: slavery and antislavery at the nation's founding
No Property in Man THE NATHAN I. HUGGINS LECTURES No Property in Man SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY AT THE NATION’S FOUNDING Sean Wilentz Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts London, England 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Sean Wilentz All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca First printing Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Wilentz, Sean, author. Title: No property in man : slavery and antislavery at the nation’s founding / Sean Wilentz. Other titles: Nathan I. Huggins lectures. Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2018. | Series: The Nathan I. Huggins lectures | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018006851 | ISBN 9780674972223 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Slavery— Law and legislation— United States. | Antislavery movements— United States. | Constitutional history— United States. Classification: LCC KF4545.S5 W59 2018 | DDC 342.7308/7— dc23 LC rec ord available at https://lccn . loc . gov/2018006851 Jacket design: Annamarie McMahon Why To David Brion Davis Contents Preface ix A Note on Terminology xvii introduction 1 1 Slavery, Property, and Emancipation in Revolutionary Amer i ca 25 2 The Federal Convention and the Curse of Heaven 58 3 Slavery, Antislavery, and the Strug gle for Ratification 115 4 To the Missouri Crisis 152 5 Antislavery, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War 206 epilogue 263 Notes 271 Index 337 preface I n 1987, Supreme Court associate justice Thurgood Marshall, in a widely publicized speech, disavowed the official cele brations marking the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. The flag- waving festivities and gauzy invocations of the framers, he protested, ignored the original Constitution’s protection of racial slavery. The cele brations’ distortion of history could not have been more offensive: northern delegates to the Federal Convention, Justice Marshall recounted, had plainly traded princi ple for commercial self- interest, striking compromises with slave- holders that tightened the shackles of h uman bondage. The Constitu- tion reflected a wider assumption among white Americans that blacks were inferior creatures and articles of property, to be bought and sold like any other chattel. To ignore this brutal dishonor, Marshall con- tended, would only deepen the moral stain left at the nation’s founding. The bicentennial, he said, should instead commemorate the succeeding generations of Americans who rewrote the Constitution by destroying slavery and fighting for racial justice— “ those,” he remarked, “who re- fused to acquiesce in outdated notions of ‘liberty,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘equality,’ and who strived to better them.” ix
The list of books you might like
