The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery

by Don E. Fehrenbacher, Ward M. McAfee (Editor)

William Lloyd Garrison argued--and many leading historians have since agreed--that the Constitution of the United States was a proslavery document. Garrison called it "a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell." But in The Slaveholding Republic, one of America's most eminent historians, Don E. Fehrenbacher, argues against this claim, in a wide-ranging, landmark history that stretches from the Continental Congress to the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

Fehrenbacher ranges from sharp-eyed analyses of the deal-making behind the "proslavery clauses" of the constitution, to colorful accounts of partisan debates in Congress and heated confrontations with Great Britain (for instance, over slaves taken off American ships and freed in British ports). He shows us 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 US policy--whether in foreign courts, on the high seas, in federal territories, or even in the District of Columbia--was consistently proslavery. The book concludes with a brilliant portrait of Lincoln. 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."

The last and perhaps most important book by a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian, The Slaveholding Republic illuminates one of the most enduring issues in our nation's history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Don E. Fehrenbacher was William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University, where he taught form 1953 until his retirement in 1984. Fehrenbacher earned his BA from Cornell College in 1946, his master's and doctorate from the University of Chicago and a second master's from the University of Oxford.

Reviews

[Alex Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that convincingly argues that, far from just tacitly tolerating slavery, the United States was effectively a pro-slavery nation from its founding until the end of the Civil War. At home and abroad, the US government played the role of slave catcher, slave trader, and slave-territory expander.

The chapters on US complicity in the Atlantic slave trade and the general pro-slavery bent of American foreign policy in the antebellum period were especially revealing, as Fehrenbacher really lays bear how much slavery colored US diplomacy. He details how successive administrations from James Monroe to James Buchanan turned down repeated British requests for American aid in suppressing the slave trade. In particular, the US refusal to agree to the key British demand, the right to search vessels flying the US flag in international waters, practically carved a Stars-and-Stripes-sized loophole in the slave trade; Brazilian and Spanish slave traders proudly flew the US flag knowing it granted them immunity from British seizure of their human cargo. Persistent US efforts to force Britain to hand over runaway slaves are also documented in the book: slaves that escaped with the British after the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, fled to Canada, or were shipwrecked in the Bahamas were all alike eagerly pursued by the US government.

At home, the story was much the same. Fugitive slaves were pursued with the same ardor by federal marshals and commissioners; the nation's capital, under the direct supervision of the federal government, was made safe for slavery; and the government ensured that as the territorial reach of the United States extended ever more westward, slavery more or less followed in its footsteps.

Reading this book really drives home why the South reacted as violently as it did to the ascension of a moderately anti-slavery Republican administration in 1861. Having relied upon the safety blanket of a sympathetic federal government to protect slavery for so long, for Southerners to see that government now in the hands of a party that was committed to restricting slavery's reach and, indeed, putting it on the long-term path to extinction made the South's anger and feeling of insecurity all the more palpable.

[Bud · Rating 5 out of 5]

The review found under the following link

http://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/...

sums up my impression of Fehrenbacher's book as well. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this subject.

[D. L. Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author is a well noted historian. He argues in this volume that the framers of the Constitution had not intended to make slavery a national institution. Despite this, a Southern dominated Congress managed to provide protection within the national government enabling it to survive. Not all Americans acquiesced in this new understanding, leading to a sectionalization of politics that produced a bloody conflagration. The author argues that the Constitution was neither pro nor anti slavery in its intended but neutral. He also points out that Lincoln believed that the fundamental law had been established upon a cultural assumption that slavery would remain only temporarily in a land. After the Constitution's ratification, however, the government became subservient to Slave holding interests. Lincoln attempted to reverse this, resulting in the Civil War.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another extraordinary achievement of the late, lamented historian of the US during the early national and antebellum periods. He traces quite clearly how the federal government protected slavery from the adoption of the federal constitution until the Civil War.

[Karen]

* Understanding Oppression: African American Rights (Then and Now)

The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to #slavery