Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Slavery was not a national institution / /Sean Wilentz // NY Times

A couple days ago Senator Sanders spoke at Liberty University - a school founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell - a segregationist who learned to temper his views and founded the insufferably named organization The Moral Majority. Sanders was reported to have said that this country was "founded on racist principles".  Well...not quite - this country was founded on a deplorable compromise, not an open embrace of racist principles.  Lincoln thus was able to draw on the Declaration of independence to defend the union.   Princeton historian Sean Wilentz amplifies the point well. - gwc
Constitutionally, Slavery Is No National Institution - The New York Times
by SeanWilentz

Far from a proslavery compact of “racist principles,” the Constitution was based on a repudiation of the idea of a nation dedicated to the proposition of property in humans. Without that antislavery outcome in 1787, slavery would not have reached “ultimate extinction” in 1865....
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