The Slaveholding Republic

An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery

the late Don E. Fehrenbacher
Completed and Edited by Ward M. McAfee

The Slaveholding Republic

An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery

the late Don E. Fehrenbacher
Completed and Edited by Ward M. McAfee

Description

Many leading historians have argued that the Constitution of the United States was a proslavery document. But in The Slaveholding Republic, one of America's most eminent historians refutes this claim in a landmark history that stretches from the Continental Congress to the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln.
Fehrenbacher shows that the Constitution itself was more or less neutral on the issue of slavery and that, in the antebellum period, the idea that the Constitution protected slavery was hotly debated (many Northerners would concede only that slavery was protected by state law, not by federal law). Nevertheless, he also reveals that U.S. policy abroad and in the territories was consistently proslavery. Fehrenbacher makes clear why Lincoln's election was such a shock to the South and shows how Lincoln's approach to emancipation, which seems exceedingly cautious by modern standards, quickly evolved into a "Republican revolution" that ended the anomaly of the United States as a "slaveholding republic."

The Slaveholding Republic

An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery

the late Don E. Fehrenbacher
Completed and Edited by Ward M. McAfee

Author Information

The late Don E. Fehrenbacher died in 1997. He was the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University. His book The Dred Scott Case won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979, and he edited and completed David M. Potter's The Impending Crisis, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977. He was awarded the Lincoln Prize for lifetime achievement in 1997.

Ward M. McAfee is Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino. One of Fehrenbacher's former students, he has published in a variety of fields, including the Civil War and Reconstruction, world religions, and California history. He lives in Upland, California.

The Slaveholding Republic

An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery

the late Don E. Fehrenbacher
Completed and Edited by Ward M. McAfee

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the 2002 Avery O. Craven Award of the Organization of American Historians
Special Commendation, 2002 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

"The Slaveholding Republic not only advances our knowledge of the critical relationships of slavery to the American government, placing it in perspective and explaining its meaning, but it also helps frame contemporary debates over the perennial question about the relative power of the nation and the locality. One could hardly ask for more."--Ira Berlin, The Washington Post

"A fitting complement to Don Fehrenbacher's prize-winning book, The Dred Scott Case. With his hallmark of careful research and precise language, Fehrenbacher convincingly shows how domination of the federal government by slaveholding interests shaped a Constitution that was originally neutral toward slavery into a bulwark of the peculiar institution. The election of Lincoln in 1860 brought this domination to an end, causing the South to create a new slaveholding republic that plunged the nation in war."--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom

"The portrait of Lincoln presented here is particularly interesting, effectively contradicting the revisionist view that he was, at best, a lukewarm opponent of slavery."--Jay Freeman, Booklist

"Engagingly written, thoughtfully conceived, and filled with flashes of insight. Here is a compelling contribution to the ongoing debate about the nation's ends and means, its better angels, and its fundamental law."--Phillip Shaw Paludan, author of "A People's Contest": The Union and the Civil War

"A major historian addresses a major theme in the late Don Fehrenbacher's The Slaveholding Republic. Rigorously based on the original sources, this book accurately and soberly relates the shameful story of how the federal government treated human beings as property."--Daniel Walker Howe, Rhodes Professor of American History, Oxford University

"This work will stand as Fehrenbacher's most important."--Journal of Southern History

"Don Fehrenbacher has left us a splendid monument to a life lived well in history. The culmination of a half-century of his scholarship, this book vindicates the United States Constitution and its framers from the opprobrium of establishing slavery. The Slaveholding Republic flows with Fehrenbacher's luminous thought and his fair, judicious judgments. What a magnificent testament it is."--William M. Wiecek, Syracuse University School of Law