Sean Wilentz is a famous historian at Princeton. Even though he has taken the role of official Bob Dylan historian, he is not my favorite historian. But since the history of slavery is so central to understanding out history, I am attracted to any book with this subject.
The subject is property in man. Slave holders held that slaves were property and that when they seceded from the country they were defending their property rights. Wilentz's point is that at the Constitutional Convention the drafters rejected the concept of property in man. Our Constitution does not sanction that human beings are property. The drafters specifically and emphatically rejection this principle. This fact ultimately led to emancipation at the end of the Civil War. Constitutional rejection of property in man was the crucial fact that led to emancipation.
Okay, point taken. So what? The author overstates the importance of this fact. I'd rather trace the history of slavery and its eventual demise in other ways. Go away, Professor Wilentz.
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