Harvard
University Press will publish a book on the debate concerning slavery at the
founding of the American Republic later this month. The book is available as
from the 13th August.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A radical
reconstruction of the founders’ debate over slavery and the Constitution, by
the best-selling, award-winning author of The Rise of American Democracy.
Americans revere
the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of
slavery. Some historians have charged that slaveholders actually enshrined
human bondage at the nation’s founding. The acclaimed political historian 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 and timely 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
antislavery versions based on the framers’ refusal to validate what they called
“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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean Wilentz is
George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University.
He is the author of numerous books on American history and politics, including
The Rise of American Democracy, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist
for the Pulitzer Prize, and The Politicians and the Egalitarians, chosen as
Best History Book of the Year by Kirkus and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Wilentz’s writings on American music have earned him two Grammy nominations and
two Deems-Taylor-ASCAP awards.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
A Note on
Terminology
Introduction
1. Slavery,
Property, and Emancipation in Revolutionary America
2. The Federal
Convention and the Curse of Heaven
3. Slavery,
Antislavery, and the Struggle for Ratification
4. To the
Missouri Crisis
5. Antislavery,
the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War
Epilogue
Notes
Index
