Michael F. Conlin. The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War

Michael F. Conlin believes that northerners and southerners “viewed the sectional conflict over servile labor through the lens of the Constitution” (xvii). His goal in The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War is to present a “people’s history of the antebellum Constitution, slavery, and the sectional conflict” that will demonstrate the key importance the debate over the meaning of the Constitution had in reflecting North-South divisions (xxx). “Ordinary” Americans, he argues, played a significant role in interpreting and implementing the Constitution. Conlin convincingly demonstrates that whether Americans supported or opposed the institution of slavery, they debated sectional issues in constitutional terms. In addition, he insists that this “popular constitutionalism” sheds light on the question of Civil War causation (xxv). In the course of his book, Conlin cites the many clauses of the Constitution that became battlegrounds in the contest over slavery, including the domestic violence clause, the federal district clause, the guarantee clause, the military installations clause, the territory clause, the militia clause, the privileges and immunities clause, the three-fifths clause, the fugitive slave clause, and the African slave trade clause, among many others. He shows in expansive detail how each of these elements of the Constitution played out during the course of the sectional debate that enveloped the nation in the first half of the nineteenth century.

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