Contesting Slavery: The Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the New American Nation

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix Foreword by Peter S. Onuf xi Introduction Slavery, Sectionalism, and Politics in the Early American Republic John Craig Hammond and Matthew Mason 1 Part I Slavery and Ideology, Action and Inaction Necessary but Not Sufficient: Revolutionary Ideology and Antislavery Action in the Early Republic Matthew Mason 11 Early Free-Labor Thought and the Contest over Slavery in the Early Republic Eva Sheppard Wolf 32 ‘‘Manifest Signs of Passion’’: The First Federal Congress, Antislavery, and Legacies of the Revolutionary War Robert G. Parkinson 49 ‘‘Good Communications Corrects Bad Manners’’: The BannekerJefferson Dialogue and the Project of White Uplift Richard Newman 69 Caribbean Slave Revolts and the Origins of the Gag Rule: A Contest between Abolitionism and Democracy, 1797–1835 Edward B. Rugemer 94 Part II The State and Slavery Founding a Slaveholders’ Union, 1770–1797 George William Van Cleve 117 ‘‘Uncontrollable Necessity’’: The Local Politics, Geopolitics, and Sectional Politics of Slavery Expansion John Craig Hammond 138 viii Contents Positive Goods and Necessary Evils: Commerce, Security, and Slavery in the Lower South, 1787–1837 Brian Schoen 161 Slave Smugglers, Slave Catchers, and Slave Rebels: Slavery and American State Development, 1787–1842 David F. Ericson 183 Part III Slavery, Sectionalism, and Partisan Politics ‘‘Hurtful to the State’’: The Political Morality of Federalist Antislavery Rachel Hope Cleves 207 Slavery and the Problem of Democracy in Jeffersonian America Padraig Riley 227 Neither Infinite Wretchedness nor Positive Good: Mathew Carey and Henry Clay on Political Economy and Slavery during the Long 1820s Andrew Shankman 247 The Decline of Antislavery Politics, 1815–1840 Donald J. Ratcliffe 267 Commentary Conflict vs. Racial Consensus in the History of Antislavery Politics James Oakes 291 Notes on Contributors 305 Index 309 ...