No Property in Man

No Property in Man
Author: Sean Wilentz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2018-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674972228


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A radical reconstruction of the founders’ debate over slavery and the Constitution. 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.


No Property in Man
Language: en
Pages: 369
Authors: Sean Wilentz
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-09-06 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

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A radical reconstruction of the founders’ debate over slavery and the Constitution. Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its ori
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Pages: 482
Authors: Andrew Delbanco
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-11-05 - Publisher: Penguin

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A New York Times Notable Book Selection Winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Lionel Trilling Book Award
No Property in Man
Language: en
Pages: 369
Authors: Sean Wilentz
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-09-03 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

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Driving straight to the heart of the most contentious issue in American history, Sean Wilentz argues controversially that, far from concealing a crime against h
No Treason (Volume 1)
Language: en
Pages: 70
Authors: Lysander Spooner
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-03-05 - Publisher: Read Books Ltd

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Originally published in 1870, this essay by the American anarchist and political philosopher Lysander Spooner is here reproduced. Described by Murray Rothbard a
Man of No Property
Language: en
Pages: 372
Authors: C. S. Andrews
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2001 - Publisher:

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This is a dramatic portrait of the young nationalist, released from internment in 1924 and determined to shape a new Ireland. Andrews completed his studies at U