Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom. By Graham A.Peck. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Pp. 264. $34.95.) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Cwbr Author Interview: Freedom National: The Destruction Of Slavery In The United States, 1861-1865
Civil War Book Review
Click here for the review Civil War Book Review (CWBR): Today, I'm discussing with Professor James Oakes his new published Freedom National: The Destruction of slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, which was recently awarded the 2013 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Congratulations Dr. Oakes and thank you for joining us today. James Oakes (JO): Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. CWBR: You review in your book the drive of Republicans to make freedom national since the 1830s. How did the Republican Party find such a level of freedom in the Constitution when the Democrats did not? JO: Well, that's a long and complicated question. They went back to the records of the Constitutional Convention and to the records of the founding era and discovered to their own satisfaction. They were satisfied to discover that the founders had left an anti-slavery legacy that was more powerful than most contemporary historians actually believe was there and also that one wing of the anti-slavery movement, the Garisonian wing, belief was there specifically they saw in the language of the Constitution the repeated reference to slaves as persons rather than property and from that they deduced that the Constitution did not recognize slaves as property from the anti-slavery rulings of English courts
The US Civil War was fought over slavery. But what do we really mean when we say that? This paper examines that question, first by exploring the idea of “higher law,” which gained tremendous traction in American society starting around 1850. Proponents of the idea claimed that laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act are immoral; that the immorality of such laws is self-evident, and that such immoral laws should be resisted—sometimes even with violence. Meanwhile, opponents of the idea of higher law were not necessarily in favor of slavery, but they opposed the use of extra-Constitutional means to bring about its end. Newspaper articles, editorials, letters, poems, and more from the 1850s and through the war years prove that beyond the well-known figures who promoted or opposed higher law, people throughout the nation became very familiar with the idea; the ubiquity of references to higher law helped to drive a mass, antislavery movement among Northern whites and Blacks alike, and made possible the 1860 election of the anti-slavery candidate Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln recognized, however, the risks inherent in the idea of higher law; after all, one could claim that the right to enslave Blacks and to create a new nation around the principle of white supremacy was also self-evident; in fact, many did. But Lincoln found an ingenious way to synthesize his own commitment to the Constitution with the idea of higher law, by positing that the nation had already been founded on a “higher law,” one which promoted, above all else, human equality. Lincoln argued for an integrated reading of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, insisting that the lofty principles of the Declaration should be understood as a tacit feature of the Constitution. Lincoln held, therefore, to a strict antislavery constitutionalism, which led him to attempt to use non-violent, Constitutional means to eliminate slavery in the South. The war that followed was a war to save the Union, of course, but when viewed through the lens of his antislavery Constitutionalism, Lincoln’s commitment to saving the Union becomes indistinguishable from his hostility to slavery. In other words, Lincoln fought the Civil War for four, long, horrific years—at the cost of 700,000 American lives—in order to bring an end to slavery.
Getting Right with Lincoln . . . and Black Freedom
Reviews in American History, 2008
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.