Creating A More Perfect Slaveholders Union

"In 1869, in Texas v White, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the unilateral secession of a state from the Union was unconstitutional because the Constitution created "an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states." This meant that once a state became part of the Union, "[t]here was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the states." In this iconoclastic work, Peter Radan demonstrates why the court's ruling was wrong and why, on the basis of American constitutional law in 1860-1861, the unilateral secessions of the Confederate States were lawful on the grounds that the United States was forged as a "Slaveholders' Union." Creating a more perfect Slaveholders' Union deals with two constitutional issues: first, whether the states in 1860 had a right to secede from the Union, and second, what significance slavery had in defining the constitutional Union. The two matters came together when the states seceded on the grounds that the system of government the Confederate States had agreed to-namely, a system of human enslavement-had been violated by the incoming Republican administration. The legitimacy of this secession was anchored, as Radan shows, in the compact theory of the Constitution, which held that, because the Constitution was a compact between the member states of the Union, breaches of its fundamental provisions gave affected states the right to unilaterally secede from the Union. In so doing the Confederate States sought to preserve and protect their peculiar institution by forming a more perfect Slaveholders' Union"--

In Texas v. White (1869), the Supreme Court ruled that the unilateral secession of a state from the Union was unconstitutional because the Constitution created “an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States.” The Court ruled “there was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States.” In his iconoclastic work, Peter Radan demonstrates why the Court’s ruling was wrong and why, on the basis of American constitutional law in 1860–1861, the unilateral secessions of the Confederate states were lawful on the grounds that the United States was forged as a “slaveholders’ Union. Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union addresses two constitutional issues: first, whether the states in 1860 had a right to secede from the Union, and second, what significance slavery had in defining the constitutional Union. These two matters came together when the states seceded on the grounds that the system of government they had agreed to—namely, a system of human enslavement—had been violated by the incoming Republican administration. The legitimacy of this secession was anchored, as Radan demonstrates, in the compact theory of the Constitution, which held that because the Constitution was a compact between the member states of the Union, breaches of its fundamental provisions gave affected states the right to unilaterally secede from the Union. In so doing the Confederate states sought to preserve and protect their peculiar institution by forming a more perfect slaveholders’ Union. Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union stands as the first and only systematic analysis of the legal arguments mounted for and against secession in 1860–1861 and reshapes how we understand the Civil War and, consequently, the history of the United States more generally.

Race, from the beginning and more than any other element, has shaped America's institutions, its economics, politics, laws, social structures, and political attitudes. Congressman Jackson considers race to be the focal point of America through the language of the economy because "the economy is the hearing aid through which Americans hear all political dialogue." In this thought provoking work, Jackson provides ample documentation and insightful analysis of the inextricable link between race and economics. More important Jackson proposes a radical economic strategy and program of new human rights that would build A More Perfect Union for all Americans and put them in a better position to come to grips with this enduring American legacy.

Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil , first published in 2006, concerns what is entailed by pledging allegiance to a constitutional text and tradition saturated with concessions to evil. The Constitution of the United States was originally understood as an effort to mediate controversies between persons who disputed fundamental values, and did not offer a vision of the good society. In order to form a 'more perfect union' with slaveholders, late-eighteenth-century citizens fashioned a constitution that plainly compelled some injustices and was silent or ambiguous on other questions of fundamental right. This constitutional relationship could survive only as long as a bisectional consensus was required to resolve all constitutional questions not settled in 1787. Dred Scott challenges persons committed to human freedom to determine whether antislavery northerners should have provided more accommodations for slavery than were constitutionally strictly necessary or risked the enormous destruction of life and property that preceded Lincoln's new birth of freedom.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed freedom for Americans from the domination of Great Britain, yet for millions of African Americas caught up in a brutal system of racially based slavery, freedom would be denied for ninety additional years until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Freedom’s Delay: America’s Struggle for Emancipation, 1776–1865 probes the slow, painful, yet ultimately successful crusade to end slavery throughout the nation, North and South. This work fills an important gap in the literature of slavery’s demise. Unlike other authors who focus largely on specific time periods or regional areas, Allen Carden presents a thematically structured national synthesis of emancipation. Freedom’s Delay offers a comprehensive and unique overview of the process of manumission commencing in 1776 when slavery was a national institution, not just the southern experience known historically by most Americans. In this volume, the entire country is examined, and major emancipatory efforts—political, literary, legal, moral, and social—made by black and white, free and enslaved individuals are documented over the years from independence through the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Freedom’s Delay dispels many of the myths about slavery and abolition, including that racial servitude was of little consequence in the North, and, where it did exist, it ended quickly and easily; that abolition was a white man’s cause and blacks were passive recipients of liberty; that the South seceded primarily to protect states’ rights, not slavery; and that the North fought the Civil War primarily to end the subjugation of African Americans. By putting these misunderstandings aside, this book reveals what actually transpired in the fight for human rights during this critical era. Carden’s inclusion of a cogent preface and epilogue assures that Freedom’s Delay will find a significant place in the literature of American slavery and freedom. With a compelling preface and epilogue, notes, illustrations and tables, and a detailed bibliography, this volume will be of great value not only in courses on American history and African American history but also to the general reading public. Allen Carden is professor of history at Fresno Pacific University in Fresno, California. He is the author of Puritan Christianity in America: Religion and Life in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts.

In its early years, the American Republic was far from stable. Conflict and violence, including major land wars, were defining features of the period from the Revolution to the outbreak of the Civil War, as struggles over who would control land and labor were waged across the North American continent. The World of the Revolutionary American Republic brings together original essays from an array of scholars to illuminate the issues that made this era so contested. Drawing on the latest research, the essays examine the conflicts that occurred both within the Republic and between the different peoples inhabiting the continent. Covering issues including slavery, westward expansion, the impact of Revolutionary ideals, and the economy, this collection provides a diverse range of insights into the turbulent era in which the United States emerged as a nation. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, both American and international, The World of the Revolutionary American Republic is an important resource for any scholar of early America.

Winner of the 2022 New-York Historical Society Book Prize in American History A Washington Post and BookPage Best Nonfiction Book of the Year From a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the powerful story of a fragile nation as it expands across a contested continent. In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny. The newly constituted United States actually emerged as a fragile, internally divided union of states contending still with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Native peoples sought to defend their homelands from the flood of American settlers through strategic alliances with the other continental powers. The system of American slavery grew increasingly powerful and expansive, its vigorous internal trade in Black Americans separating parents and children, husbands and wives. Bitter party divisions pitted elites favoring strong government against those, like Andrew Jackson, espousing a democratic populism for white men. Violence was both routine and organized: the United States invaded Canada, Florida, Texas, and much of Mexico, and forcibly removed most of the Native peoples living east of the Mississippi. At the end of the period the United States, its conquered territory reaching the Pacific, remained internally divided, with sectional animosities over slavery growing more intense. Taylor’s elegant history of this tumultuous period offers indelible miniatures of key characters from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller. It captures the high-stakes political drama as Jackson and Adams, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster contend over slavery, the economy, Indian removal, and national expansion. A ground-level account of American industrialization conveys the everyday lives of factory workers and immigrant families. And the immersive narrative puts us on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Mexico City, Quebec, and the Cherokee capital, New Echota. Absorbing and chilling, American Republics illuminates the continuities between our own social and political divisions and the events of this formative period.

"Why and how did Americans perceive themselves as one people from the early history of the republic? How did African Americans and others at the margins of U.S. civic culture apply this concept of union? Why did the term disappear from use after the 1880s? In his search for answers, Kersh employs a wide range of methods, including political-theory analysis of writings by James Madison, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln and empirical analysis drawing on his own extensive database of American newspapers. The author's findings are persuasive - and often surprising. One intriguing development, for instance, was a strong resurgence of union feelings among Southerners - including prominent former secessionists - after the Civil War.".