James Madison may not have been a stalwart antislavery champion when he told the Federal convention that it would be wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man. "Of course it was wrong," Charles Sumner (later) exclaimed to the Senate. "It was criminal and unpardonable. Thank God it was not done" That it was not done, though, made all the difference. Despite all the slaveholders won in 1787, despite all the ways the Constitution reinforced human bondage and thwarted its abolition, that exclusion would help inspire and legitimize the politics that, within a long lifetime's memory, brought slavery to its knees." page 268</b>
Thus ends Sean Wilentz' masterful study of the "paradox" of the Constitution ... a document that at one turn tolerated the existence of slavery, while at the same time steadfastly refused to codify "property in man" ... and thereby created the sliver of daylight by which a future generation of Americans would bring slavery to an end.
Paradoxes by their nature are hard to argue. For every compelling argument for "X", there is an equally strong claim to be made for "Y". But Wilentz has dug deeply into the Framers writings and speeches and relies heavily on James Madison's published notes on the Federal Convention deliberations to put forth a compelling argument. There was an anti-slavery presence in the national discourse and in its politics from before the Revolution, through the Articles and the Constitution and this anti-slavery sentiment had an impact on the way the Constitution was ultimately argued and crafted and its presence led to Civil War and slavery’s death.
The US could have become a "slaveholding leviathan" (page 21), but it didn't. It ultimately killed slavery because of "a determined constitutional agitation by antislavery partisans against long odds that the Constitution also helped establish."
Wilentz expertly weaves together these opposite threads ... the hopes of Southerners to extend and expand slavery, justified by their interpretation of the Constitution as sanctioning "property in man"; against the rising and discordant voices of abolitionism (both within and outside of government) that clung to the Constitution's obvious absence of such a legal distinction. Wilentz is balanced; he presents the strengths and weaknesses of both sides’ arguments.
Spending a good 40% of the book on the Federal Convention and the deliberations therein over the 3/5th Compromise, the Electoral College and the Fugitive Slave clause (which doesn't refer to such fugitives as "slaves", nor does the Constitution ever use the term), Wilentz moves over the later half of the book to cover with less detail but certainly with precision the debates over the Constitutional authority, specifically as it relates to the extension of slavery into territories that hadn't existed in at the time of the Constitution's writing. The Missouri Compromise, the rise of the Liberty and Republican Parties, the growing abolitionist movement, the Compromise of 1850, popular sovereignty and the Dred Scott case are all signposts on the way to Civil War and slavery's demise. At each stop, Wilentz shows how both Southerners and Northerners were interpreting the Constitution's treatment of slavery to bolster their cause, but he steadfastly reminds the reader of his thesis: this paradox was created by the Founders and would work, ultimately, on behalf of anti-slavery forces.
Wilentz does not come across dogmatically, however. While his thesis is clear, this is not a tome written to score social and cultural points in our current (and retro-styled) divide over race in America. Rather, Wilentz shows what is plainly clear: The Constitution tolerated slavery, but its refusal to assent to some Framers’ desires to make property of men was the slow-release poison pill that would one day bring slavery to its end.
A good read. According to an updated preface, his argument has been well received in academia. Dense in evidence but a clear and provocative point is made
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