Replies

” New Left historian Staughton Lynd read causation into this coincidence, claiming that Garrison and his followers seized on James Madison’s “Notes” “to show in detail what they had long suspected: that the revered Constitution was a sordid sectional compromise, in Garrison’s words ‘a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.’”

“to show in detail what they had long suspected: that the revered Constitution was a sordid sectional compromise, in Garrison’s words ‘a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.’”

Here's the deal. Any constitution that did not recognize existing slavery rights was not going to get passed. Your choice was this, or nothing. The debates on the Constitution say this very thing.

If they had preferred dissolution, the British would have quickly scooped up the dissident colonies, and that would be that.

Not “legend”, but “myth”. Nothing in the original texts of either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States ever enshrined slavery as any kind of national policy or a protected right. It did take several amendments to the Constitution to spell out the actual prohibition of human bondage, but the roots of slavery were never in what was to become the United States.

Slavery was a condition of mankind from times immemorial, before there was recorded history, and is mentioned time and again in the earliest records of history, from ancient texts that have survived and been translated into today’s language. Outlawed today in virtually every country except for some of Muslim-majority rule, and practiced clandestinely yet today, there is no moral code that elevates slavery in any way to a virtue, or conversely even necessary as an evil.

Slavery in ancient Rome was a necessary part of both their culture and their economy, as the slaves were the task force that supplied the wants and needs of the “free” people and the upper ruling class. Human bondage was used to procure status, both by those who willingly signed into indentured service, and by those who imposed involuntary servitude upon others.

Slaves and indentured servants were delegated the jobs of doing all the scut work, that kept the power of the Roman Empire at the forefront of the civilized world in its time. The idea of a free people undertaking these tasks was not even considered.

from the article: "” New Left historian Staughton Lynd read causation into this coincidence, claiming that Garrison and his followers seized on James Madison’s “Notes” “to show in detail what they had long suspected: that the revered Constitution was a sordid sectional compromise, in Garrison’s words ‘a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.’”"

And Garrison's is just the argument we've seen posted ad nauseum by Lost Causers here -- they say the Constitution "enshrines" slavery!

But the article's author is trying to argue the opposite: no it doesn't, he says, and Madison's "Notes" prove it.

Well, maybe Madison's "Notes" do, we'd certainly wish they do, but as near as I can tell, it's still a matter of perspective and interpretation.
For example: if the US Constitution did indeed "enshrine" slavery, why would the Confederate constitution go to such lengths to explicitly spell out the, ah, "enshrinement" the US Constitution already contained?

I get the sense here that Pelham is delighted to share with us Garrison's original condemnation of the Constitution as "pro-slavery" while he wishes to carefully ignore this article's point that: no, it's not.