Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson

by Paul Finkelman

Overview

In Slavery and the Founders, Paul Finkelman addresses a central issue of the American founding: how the first generation of leaders of the United States dealt with the profoundly important question of human bondage. The book explores the tension between the professed idea of America as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and the reality of the early American republic, reminding us of the profound and disturbing ways that slavery affected the U.S. Constitution and early American politics. It also offers the most important and detailed short critique of Thomas Jefferson's relationship to slavery available, while at the same time contrasting his relationship to slavery with that of other founders. This third edition of Slavery and the Founders incorporates a new chapter on the regulation and eventual (1808) banning of the African slave trade.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781317520245
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/09/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	322
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Paul Finkelman is a distinguished historian and legal scholar specializing in American legal history, constitutional law, and race and the law. He is the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and more than 40 books.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Third Edition

1. Making a Covenant with Death: Slavery and the Constitutional Convention

2. Slavery and the Northwest Ordinance, 1787: A Study in Ambiguity

3. Evading the Ordinance: The Persistence of Bondage in Indiana and Illinois

4. Implementing the Proslavery Constitution: The Adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793

5. Ending the African Slave Trade in the New Nation

6. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Federalism

7. "Treason Against the Hopes of the World": Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

8. Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Antislavery: Historians and Myths

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Finkelman, a leading American expert on the law of slavery, places the problem of slavery in the context of early American politics and constitution-making. He demonstrates that slavery was one of the central issues at the Constitutional Convention, and points to the first fugitive slave law as evidence that debate on slavery in national politics predated the antebellum period. This second edition incorporates new revelations about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings and adds a chapter on Federalist attitudes toward emancipation. Finkelman is affiliated with the University of Tulsa College of Law. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"Despite the egalitarian wording of the framers of the Constitution, legal historian Paul Finkelman shows in stunning detail the nameless presence of 'slavery'—the word itself hidden in plain sight while its meaning and implications pervaded every article of the original document. This third edition of Slavery and the Founders, with its provocative new chapter on ending the African Slave Trade, weaves together the complex motivations of the Revolutionary generation, both its proslavery and antislavery representatives, into a tightly argued narrative. Today, as we commemorate the various sesquicentennial anniversaries related to the Civil War and the end of slavery, Finkelman offers a timely reminder of why the American legal system ultimately rejected the original intent of its founders." — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Harvard University

"The new edition of Paul Finkelman's provocative Slavery and the Founders is a welcome addition to the literature. No one in recent years has done more than Finkelman to force scholars to rethink the relationship between racial slavery and the founding of the American republic. Written with passionate purpose and an extraordinary mastery of the field, these important essays will help set the agenda for the next generation of scholarship. Finkelman's essays on Jefferson are particularly notable, definitively demolishing the Master of Monticello's antislavery credentials." — Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia (on the previous edition)

"Forcefully and eloquently, Paul Finkelman presses the case that slavery and race were towering issues in the politics of the early American republic—and that Thomas Jefferson could be reliably found on the proslavery, antiblack side of every controversy. This enlarged edition of the 1996 book refines the previous content and adds a new essay on slavery in the Age of Federalism." — Peter Wallenstein, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (on the previous edition)

From the Publisher