No Property in Man
Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation's Founding
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4156366 |
|---|---|
| Authors | H Robert Baker (0009-0002-0838-2915, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 741-742 |
| Publication date | 2019-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaz544 |
| OpenAlex | W2994293131 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Few points seem more historically settled than that of the proslavery Constitution. Following the lead of scholars such as Paul Finkelman, William Wiecek and Gary Nash, historians have taken for granted that the Constitution's protections of slavery aided slaveholders in their quest for power and abetted the expansion of slavery across the continent. Even those who argued in favor of a more slavery-neutral Constitution—notably Don E. Fehrenbacher—admitted that the Constitution had been given a permanent proslavery interpretation after a short period of operation. Sean Wilentz offers a potent rejoinder in this reprinting of his Nathan I. Huggins Lecture at Harvard University. He plants his argument in the soil of ideas. It was, claims Wilentz, the trenchant refusal of several framers (Roger Sherman, Gouverneur Morris, and James Madison) to allow the Constitution to admit the principle of property in man that mattered. This—not any political calculus over representation or the slave trade—lent critical support to the antislavery cause
Argument (complex analysis · Constitution · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Property (philosophy · Representation (politics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Chemistry · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |