[LS]

For anyone interested, I am reading a fabulous book (2013, but I just got it) called “Freedom National,” developing the anti-slavery strategy of Republicans and showing that from the time of the Constitution freedom was considered a national right, while “servile persons” or “unfree persons” was considered only a local right. The momentum and direction even of Jefferson and the other founders was freedom nationally.

The significance of the “persons” vs “property in men” was critical. The Constitution viewed slaves as PERSONS in a servile status, whereas Roger Taney in Dred Scott called them chattel property. Once this distinction started to be made by antislave voices in the 1830s, the South had already lost, for Madison, the author of the Constitution, had said there was no right to chattel slavery. Any conflict between people (persons) and property would be decided in favor of people.

Great book.

[Tell It Right]

Sound like a good book. I'm tempted to read Theodore Weld's book Bible Against Slavery. It was written way back in 1838 and is one of the main intellectual arguments the Christian abolitionist movement was using against the pro-slavery lobby. Think of it as a pre-cursor to the forming of the Republican Party.

He made a very clear distinction between chattel slavery in his day and slavery even in the Old Testament where slaves had some rights and weren't property.

[BroJoeK]

"For anyone interested, I am reading a fabulous book (2013, but I just got it) called “Freedom National,” developing the anti-slavery strategy of Republicans..."

Thanks for your recommendation, I'll check it out.

Our Lost Causers on these threads typically address this issue by first claiming it's just a Leftist lie to say Civil War was "all about slavery".
It wasn't, Lost Causers claim, but rather was about Southern "States Rights" and that evil leftist Democrat Lincoln's plan to economically enslave the South.

Some further claim that slavery was dying a natural death anyway and would have, in due time, been abolished peacefully throughout the South.
In other words, our Lost Causers here don't usually defend slavery itself, but rather just attack Northern opposition to it as "unconstitutional".

Only one poster, DiogenesLamp, insists that not only was slavery constitutionally enshrined, but as so wisely expressed by SCOTUS Chief Justice Roger Taney, it was abolition which our Founders intended to make "unconstitutional".

Curiously, DiogenesLamp will not confess to supporting the Left's 1619 Project, but his condemnation of our Founders could hardly be less full-throated than theirs.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

I passed your recommendation to the American Civil War Facebook group, where I link my FR posts. It already has 3 Likes.