The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution
Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding

Locates the origins of the modern sense of a Founder's Constitution in Antebellum debates over slavery in the nation's capital.

Simon J. Gilhooley (Author)

9781108496124, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 October 2020

350 pages
15 x 23 x 2 cm, 0.57 kg

'This book is convincing and profound: a real tour de force. Gilhooley is immensely clarifying on points of history, political theory, and legal/constitutional development precisely because he integrates them. His argument that originalism emerged as a response to the exigencies of antebellum debates will be a touchstone for a very long time.' David Waldstreicher, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

This book argues that conflicts over slavery and abolition in the early American Republic generated a mode of constitutional interpretation that remains powerful today: the belief that the historical spirit of founding holds authority over the current moment. Simon J. Gilhooley traces how debates around the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia gave rise to the articulation of this constitutional interpretation, which constrained the radical potential of the constitutional text. To reconstruct the origins of this interpretation, Gilhooley draws on rich sources that include historical newspapers, pamphlets, and congressional debates. Examining free black activism in the North, Abolitionism in the 1830s, and the evolution of pro-slavery thought, this book shows how in navigating the existence of slavery in the District and the fundamental constitutional issue of the enslaved's personhood, Antebellum opponents of abolition came to promote an enduring but constraining constitutional imaginary.

Introduction
1. The Constitutional Imaginaries of the Missouri Crisis
2. The Declaration of Independence and Black Citizenship in the 1820s
3. Abolitionism and the Constitution in the 1830s
4. The Slaveholding South and the Constitutionalization of Slavery
5. Theories of the Federal Compact in the 1830s
6. Slavery, The District of Columbia, and the Constitution
7. The Congressional Crisis of 1836
8: The Compact and the Election of 1836
9. The Afterlife of the Compact of 1836
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC], Political science & theory [JPA], Politics & government [JP]