Slavery is never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but the compromises hammered out over the question are integral to the document. In a succinct but carefully reasoned study, TempleUniversity history professor David Waldstreicher shows how slave state delegates to the Constitutional Convention leveraged the issue to their advantage, and how ardent federalists from the North, many of them opposed to slavery, came to a consensus of silence over the Constitution's role in countenancing slavery. Waldstreicher concludes that the end of slavery wasn't determined by the Constitution, but by Americans who believed in higher laws than the political arrangement governing the new republic.
Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (Hill & Wang), by David Waldstreicher
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