The War Before the War
Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War
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4.8 • 14 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“Excellent . . . stunning.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates
The devastating story of how fugitive slaves drove the nation to Civil War
A New York Times Notable Book Selection * Winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize* Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award * A New York Times Critics' Best Book
For decades after its founding, America was really two nations—one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this composite nation ultimately broke apart, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the "united" states was actually a lie. Fugitive slaves exposed the contradiction between the myth that slavery was a benign institution and the reality that a nation based on the principle of human equality was in fact a prison-house in which millions of Americans had no rights at all. By awakening northerners to the true nature of slavery, and by enraging southerners who demanded the return of their human "property," fugitive slaves forced the nation to confront the truth about itself.
By 1850, with America on the verge of collapse, Congress reached what it hoped was a solution—the notorious Compromise of 1850, which required that fugitive slaves be returned to their masters. Like so many political compromises before and since, it was a deal by which white Americans tried to advance their interests at the expense of black Americans. Yet the Fugitive Slave Act, intended to preserve the Union, in fact set the nation on the path to civil war. It divided not only the American nation, but also the hearts and minds of Americans who struggled with the timeless problem of when to submit to an unjust law and when to resist.
The fugitive slave story illuminates what brought us to war with ourselves and the terrible legacies of slavery that are with us still.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Delbanco, an American studies professor at Columbia University, follows up 2012's The Abolitionist Imagination with a more in-depth look at the divisive effects of slavery on America. He argues that the problem of "fugitive slaves" the Constitution included a clause establishing the rights of slave holders to recover escaped slaves brought slavery into sharp relief, contributing to the inevitability of the Civil War. He writes that well-publicized recaptures of escaped enslaved people kept the evils of slavery front and center for Northerners (who, he points out, were often as racist as Southerners though they opposed slavery), and Northern efforts to block the return of the South's most valuable properties kept slavery at the forefront of Southern consciousness. Delbanco's strength is in making accessible to modern readers the arguments of the Southern advocates for slavery and Northern abolitionists. He examines court cases, including the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision declaring that no slave had "rights which the white man was bound to respect"; books, including Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin; and the political and legislative strategies of both Northern and Southern leaders (insightfully drawing parallels to 21st-century political rhetoric). This well-documented and valuable work makes clear how slavery shaped the early American experience with effects that reverberate today.
