The Constitution a Pro-slavery Compact
The Constitution a Pro-slavery Compact

Author: James Madison

Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group

Published: 1970

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13:

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In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) launched the American antislavery movement (as distinct from the abolition and manumission societies of the revolutionary period.) Garrison was more radical than earlier opponents of slavery, arguing that Americans should take steps to immediately end slavery. Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator, was the longest lasting antislavery paper in the nation. In the late 1830s Garrison hired the fugitive slave Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) as one of his agents, and sent Douglass across the nation to denounce slavery. Garrison's most important ally was Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), a graduate of Harvard Law School, a brilliant speaker, and a member of an elite Braham family in Boston. Phillips's cousin was the future Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Garrison rejected in political action, arguing that the Constitution was proslavery, ultimately calling it a Covenant with Death and an Agreement in Hell. Many opponents of slavery initially rejected Garrison's arguments about the Constitution. But the publication of James Madison's Notes on the Federal Convention of 1787 shortly after Madison's death in 1836, showed the extent to which slavery was an issue at the Constitutional Convention. In this book Wendell Phillips published excerpts from Madison's papers to demonstrate the proslavery nature of the Constitution. He also published excerpts from the state ratifying conventions and other documents supporting the Garrisonian argument that the Constitution was indeed a?Covenant with Death.?

The Constitution a Pro-slavery Compact, Or, Selections From the Madison Papers, Etc.
The Constitution a Pro-slavery Compact, Or, Selections From the Madison Papers, Etc.

Author: Wendell 1811-1884 Phillips

Publisher: Legare Street Press

Published: 2021-09-09

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9781013922657

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Slaveholding Republic
The Slaveholding Republic

Author: the late Don E. Fehrenbacher

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2002-12-19

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0190289120

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Many leading historians have argued that the Constitution of the United States was a proslavery document. But in The Slaveholding Republic, one of America's most eminent historians refutes this claim in a landmark history that stretches from the Continental Congress to the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Fehrenbacher shows that the Constitution itself was more or less neutral on the issue of slavery and that, in the antebellum period, the idea that the Constitution protected slavery was hotly debated (many Northerners would concede only that slavery was protected by state law, not by federal law). Nevertheless, he also reveals that U.S. policy abroad and in the territories was consistently proslavery. Fehrenbacher makes clear why Lincoln's election was such a shock to the South and shows how Lincoln's approach to emancipation, which seems exceedingly cautious by modern standards, quickly evolved into a "Republican revolution" that ended the anomaly of the United States as a "slaveholding republic."

Pragmatism, Politics, and Perversity
Pragmatism, Politics, and Perversity

Author: Joseph L. Esposito

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2012-06-14

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0739173642

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The political project of pragmatism has focused primarily on its defense of democracy as the best political system to maintain and improve human well-being over lifetimes and generations. Pragmatism Politics and Perversity: Democracy and the American Party Battle describes this project of Peirce, Dewey, Hook, and Rorty, and combines it with Charles Beard’s study of the party battle as the most determinative influence upon American democracy. The book updates and confirms Beard’s hypothesis that the history of the party battle is a chronicle of perverse schemes and self-inflicted wounds – the most salient to date being the American Civil War – because it reflects a ceaselessly disruptive contest over the creation of two largely incompatible political states: nation state and market state. The book supports its thesis with detailed historical accounts of the formation of the Constitution and early federal judiciary, the sedition trials and political schemes of the 1790s, the frustration of market state Whigs to attract white working-class voters by exploiting their religious identities, the reckless machinations of Whig Republicans in precipitating a national crisis over a contrived threat of oligarchy and white slavery, and the ideological oscillations of the Supreme Court from market state to nation state jurisprudence and back again. To reduce perversity in political rhetoric and free up pragmatic democratic practices, the book proposes a robust neo-Madisonian view of free speech, where political actors and their surrogates are not only free to speak and write, but are also obligated to explain, retract, and revise what they have said and written.

Uncivil Disobedience
Uncivil Disobedience

Author: Jennet Kirkpatrick

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2008-09-02

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1400828864

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Uncivil Disobedience examines the roles violence and terrorism have played in the exercise of democratic ideals in America. Jennet Kirkpatrick explores how crowds, rallying behind the principle of popular sovereignty and desiring to make law conform to justice, can disdain law and engage in violence. She exposes the hazards of democracy that arise when citizens seek to control government directly, and demonstrates the importance of laws and institutions as limitations on the will of the people. Kirkpatrick looks at some of the most explosive instances of uncivil disobedience in American history: the contemporary militia movement, Southern lynch mobs, frontier vigilantism, and militant abolitionism. She argues that the groups behind these violent episodes are often motivated by admirable democratic ideas of popular power and autonomy. Kirkpatrick shows how, in this respect, they are not so unlike the much-admired adherents of nonviolent civil disobedience, yet she reveals how those who engage in violent disobedience use these admirable democratic principles as a justification for terrorism and killing. She uses a "bottom-up" analysis of events to explain how this transformation takes place, paying close attention to what members of these groups do and how they think about the relationship between citizens and the law. Uncivil Disobedience calls for a new vision of liberal democracy where the rule of the people and the rule of law are recognized as fundamental ideals, and where neither is triumphant or transcendent.