Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition

A succinct account of the development of American antislavery constitutionalism in the years preceding the Civil War.

Justin Buckley Dyer (Author)

9781107454354, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 December 2014

208 pages
21.8 x 14 x 1.3 cm, 0.29 kg

'If the purpose of Dyer's book is to serve as a resource on the foundations and meanings of American antislavery constitutional rhetoric, then this is a fine contribution to the literature. It makes compelling links between past thought and more recent legal philosophers. In particular, it sheds clear light on the natural-law thinking of celebrated judges and statesmen, like Mansfield, Adams, and Lincoln.' Dominic DeBrincat, H-Net Reviews

In Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition, Justin Buckley Dyer provides a succinct account of the development of American antislavery constitutionalism in the years preceding the Civil War. Within the context of recent revisionist scholarship, Dyer argues that the theoretical foundations of American constitutionalism - which he identifies with principles of natural law - were antagonistic to slavery. Still, the continued existence of slavery in the nineteenth century created a tension between practice and principle. In a series of case studies, Dyer reconstructs the constitutional arguments of prominent antislavery thinkers such as John Quincy Adams, John McLean, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, who collectively sought to overcome the legacy of slavery by emphasizing the natural law foundations of American constitutionalism. What emerges is a convoluted understanding of American constitutional development that challenges traditional narratives of linear progress while highlighting the centrality of natural law to America's greatest constitutional crisis.

1. Prologue: slavery and the laws and rights of nature
2. Introduction: the apple of gold
3. Somerset and the antislavery constitutional tradition
4. Constitutional disharmony in The Antelope and La Amistad
5. Constitutional construction in Prigg and Dred Scott
6. Natural law, providence, and Lincoln's constitutional statesmanship
7. Public reason and the wrong of slavery
8. Conclusion: the heritage of the antislavery constitutional tradition.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC], History of ideas [JFCX], American Civil War [HBWJ], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS]