The Abolitionist Roots of Civil War Constitutionalism
by Dr. Manisha Sinha Dr. Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American history at the University of Connecticut and the author of, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 (Forthcoming Liveright, March 2024).
Produced in Boston, MA, this illustration (above) exemplifies the antagonism between Northern abolitionists and supporters of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. William Lloyd Garrison is featured on the left protecting a slave woman and pointing a pistol toward a slave catcher. LITHOGRAPH, 1851. IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
On
the eve of the Civil War, when the success of the Republican party seemed imminent, most abolitionists felt that they and the Republicans, who were committed to the non-expansion of slavery, were part of a grand antislavery coalition. The relationship between the abolition movement, whose goal was immediate emancipation and black rights, and political antislavery was intimate and symbiotic. We cannot however collapse abolitionism into Republicanism or vice versa. The politics of abolition, like its constituency, was multi-faceted, diverse, and contentious. No one slogan or program can encapsulate it except perhaps “human rights,” a term abolitionists first popularized. Radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner made it a touchstone for reconstructing American democracy after the Civil War. From the creation of the American republic to the sectional controversies over abolitionist petitions, fugitive slaves, and the extension of slavery, abolition and political antislavery were allied. Not only did the roots of antislavery constitutionalism lie in abolition, but radical free soilers were either political continued on next page
T HE A MERICA N CIVIL WA R MUSEUM
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