Product Description: During the long decade from 1848 to 1861 America was like a train speeding down the track, without an engineer or brakes. The new territories acquired from Mexico had vastly increased the size of the nation, but debate over their status—and more importantly the status of slavery within them—paralyzed the nation...read more

Taking on decades of received wisdom, David Waldstreicher has written the first book to recognize slavery’s place at the heart of the U.S. Constitution. Famously, the Constitution never mentions slavery. And yet, of its eighty-four clauses, six were directly concerned with slaves and the interests of their owners. Five other clauses had implications for slavery that were considered and debated by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the citizens of the states during ratification. This “peculiar institution” was not a moral blind spot for America’s otherwise enlightened framers, nor was it the expression of a mere economic interest. Slavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery. By tracing slavery from before the revolution, through the Constitution’s framing, and into the public debate that followed, Waldstreicher rigorously shows that slavery was not only actively discussed behind the closed and locked doors of the Constitutional Convention, but that it was also deftly woven into the Constitution itself. For one thing, slavery was central to the American economy, and since the document set the stage for a national economy, the Constitution could not avoid having implications for slavery. Even more, since the government defined sovereignty over individuals, as well as property in them, discussion of sovereignty led directly to debate over slavery’s place in the new republic. Finding meaning in silences that have long been ignored, Slavery’s Constitution is a vital and sorely needed contribution to the conversation about the origins, impact, and meaning of our nation’s founding document.

Describes the history and legacy of the Supreme Court's decision regarding the lawsuit filed by the slave Dred Scott.

Product Description: Originally a University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, the first work of its kind, and the most thorough history of slavery in any state, of particular interest for its coverage of the work of Elijah P. Lovejoy, the Alton Riots, the evolution of the Free Soil Party, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and subsequent post-Civil war developments...read more

Examines the legal bases of slavery and the long-term effects of the case on the American political, legal and judicial systems (view table of contents)

Product Description: Reprint of the first and only edition. Originally published: Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981. xii, 378 pp. Finkelman describes the judicial turmoil that ensued when slaves were taken into free states, and the resultant issues of the conflict of laws, comity and cooperation between the states, their Constitutional obligations, and the threat of the nationalization of slavery...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)

This is an abridgement of the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Dred Scott Case, making Fehrenbacher's monumental work available to a wider audience. Although it condenses the original by half, all the chapters and major themes of the larger work have been retained, providing a masterful review of the issues before America on the eve of the Civil War.