The War Before the War

September 17, 2018
Delbanco, an American studies professor at Columbia University, follows up 2012’s The Abolitionist Imagination with a more in-depth look at the divisive effects of slavery on America. He argues that the problem of “fugitive slaves”—the Constitution included a clause establishing the rights of slave holders to recover escaped slaves—brought slavery into sharp relief, contributing to the inevitability of the Civil War. He writes that well-publicized recaptures of escaped enslaved people kept the evils of slavery front and center for Northerners (who, he points out, were often as racist as Southerners though they opposed slavery), and Northern efforts to block the return of the South’s most valuable properties kept slavery at the forefront of Southern consciousness. Delbanco’s strength is in making accessible to modern readers the arguments of the Southern advocates for slavery and Northern abolitionists. He examines court cases, including the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision declaring that no slave had “rights which the white man was bound to respect”; books, including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and the political and legislative strategies of both Northern and Southern leaders (insightfully drawing parallels to 21st-century political rhetoric). This well-documented and valuable work makes clear how slavery shaped the early American experience with effects that reverberate today. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, William Morris Endeavor.

November 1, 2018
Distinguished professor of American Studies at Columbia Delbanco (The Abolitionist Imagination?, 2012) examines the untenable paradox of America's founding on democracy and liberty and dependence on slavery through the stories of those who resisted enslavement by attempting to escape. Delbanco traces the crafting of and attempts to enforce Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, known as the fugitive slave clause, which criminalized the sheltering of fugitive slaves and called on local authorities to help return them to slavers. This meant that even free black people in the North?including those who had never been enslaved?found their lives infused with terror of being seized and deported. In 1853, the story of a free black New Yorker kidnapped in 1841 in Washington, D.C., was published as Twelve Years a Slave, one of a number of narratives by individuals who tried to escape slavery? that Delbanco discusses. His history also covers court battles and the support of abolitionist sympathizers. Delbanco provides a fresh and illuminating look at those who held fast to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in unspeakably oppressive and brutal times.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2018

Delbanco's (American studies, Columbia Univ.; Melville) superb book tells the story of how the amalgamated country fractured between free and proslavery states. He concedes that there were multiple reasons, but one stands out as proof that the "united" states concept was a falsehood from the start: that enslaved bondsmen repeatedly fled their masters in search of freedom in the North. In the process, they described the evils of slavery to Northerners, all the while enraging Southerners who called for the return of their slaves. The author wins his point by showing that a growing number of Americans began to acknowledge that the nation was little more than a prison in which million of people had no rights at all. Delbanco demonstrates how a mushrooming tide of runaways incited conflict well before the Civil War. Several salient points of interest in his study include Lincoln's equivocation on the retention or abolishment of the Fugitive Slave Act as well as the war's bloody effect in driving the courses of union and emancipation toward convergence. VERDICT A paramount contribution to U.S. middle period historiography. Also recommended for both scholars and general readers of African American, Constitutional, and diplomatic history. [Prepub Alert, 5/21/18.]--John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2018

Delbanco's (American studies, Columbia Univ.; Melville) superb book tells the story of how the amalgamated country fractured between free and proslavery states. He concedes that there were multiple reasons, but one stands out as proof that the "united" states concept was a falsehood from the start: that enslaved bondsmen repeatedly fled their masters in search of freedom in the North. In the process, they described the evils of slavery to Northerners, all the while enraging Southerners who called for the return of their slaves. The author wins his point by showing that a growing number of Americans began to acknowledge that the nation was little more than a prison in which million of people had no rights at all. Delbanco demonstrates how a mushrooming tide of runaways incited conflict well before the Civil War. Several salient points of interest in his study include Lincoln's equivocation on the retention or abolishment of the Fugitive Slave Act as well as the war's bloody effect in driving the courses of union and emancipation toward convergence. VERDICT A paramount contribution to U.S. middle period historiography. Also recommended for both scholars and general readers of African American, Constitutional, and diplomatic history. [Prepub Alert, 5/21/18.]--John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2018
Provocative, sweeping study of America's original sin--slavery--in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.In January 1850, writes Delbanco (American Studies/Columbia Univ.; The Abolitionist Imagination, 2012, etc.) early on in this book, a Virginia senator named James Mason introduced what would become the Fugitive Slave Act, justifying the law constitutionally. "From the point of view of its proponents," writes the author, "it was a new attempt to solve an old problem: slavery is a condition from which the enslaved will seek to escape." Slaves fled from George Washington's farms after the Revolution, and they fled in uncountable numbers in the years after that. Writes Delbanco, 1851 would see a record number of slaves being captured under the terms of the new law, which obliged nonslaveholding states to participate in the return of escapees to bondage; a handful of that number were freed, but most were returned either judicially or without due process. "Opponents regarded compliant officials with disgust and treated them with derision," writes the author, but even so, efforts to help slaves freeing captivity were improvisational, such as the Underground Railroad, "a loose confederation of independent cells of which the membership was sometimes a single person making a snap decision to hide a runaway rather than turn him in." Meanwhile, South and North struggled to expand or contain slavery in the new territories of the West, contributing to the conditions leading to secession and war. The overarching point of Delbanco's narrative is the legal complicity of various federal institutions, from the first constitutional conventions to laws passed just before and even during the Civil War. As the author observes, Lincoln seemed torn about how to dismantle slavery legally in the months leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation; it wasn't until June 1864, in a "belated act of formal recognition of what the war had already accomplished," that Congress repealed the Fugitive Slave Act.Essential background reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the early republic and the Civil War.

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