The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War Hardcover – 6 Nov. 2018

An excellent book. It gives an illuminating insight to the effect of the Fugitive Slave Act and how it was a mainspring for the origin of the Civil War. One wonders what the South hoped to expect from secession as if it had been successful slaves would have headed north in even greater numbers.

“The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War” by Andrew Delbanco uses the issue of fugitive slaves from 1776 to 1860 to explain a considerable amount of American history and how that history turned to the bloodiest conflict the country has ever experienced.Early on, Delbanco acknowledges a significant problem in understanding and interpreting history – that many things are clear only in hindsight. When you’re living through divisive times, it’s rarely clear to see where events are going. It’s also tempting to compare something like the slavery issue to contemporary events, like immigration (legal and otherwise) or gender issues. While the author occasionally slips into that with an offhand comment or two, he largely avoids it.Where he focuses his narrative is how various documents, laws, and political debates were shaped by and dealt with the ongoing issue of fugitive slaves. That’s the lens. The issue of fugitive slaves kept the political pot boiling. It was there in the debates about the U.S. Constitution, the compromises of 1820 and 1850, the Mexican War, and various congressional proposals to deal with the slave trade and the practice of slavery. The problem for the abolitionists was that slavery was embedded in the Constitution, and it wasn’t going to be possible to get around that reality with a large block of (Southern and Middle) states dependent upon the use of slave labor.The author tells a good story and a compelling one. He tracks how the issue grew in intensity, and what role writers did and didn’t play. He goes into great detail of how fugitive slaves became a literary sub-genre, what was happening in northern state courts, and the growth of first-person accounts of slavery. He concentrates on original sources – articles, novels, magazine and newspaper accounts, letters, broadsides, court decisions, and records of congressional debates.The book also does something unexpected. Abolitionist actions and victories weren’t always unequivocally in the best interests of fugitive slaves; racism existed on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. He tells the story of a 6-year-old Louisiana slave girl named Med, who was brought to Boston in 1836 by a woman visiting her father. The woman became ill, leaving the girl under her father’s protection. A local anti-slavery society heard about the girl and sued, challenging the right of the man top keep her. The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that because slavery was forbidden in the state, the girl had to be released, and she was handed over to the custody of the anti-slavery society. The society promptly turned around and placed her in an orphanage.Delbanco is the author numerous works on history and literary studies, including “The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope;” “Melville: His World and Work;” “The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil;” “The Puritan Ordeal;” “The Abolitionist Imagination; Writing New England;” and others. He is the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University. He’s received a number of awards and recognitions, including the National Humanities Medal in 2012.Reading a contemporary book about 19th century history can be worrisome, if only because so much history is being reinterpreted to align with today’s political issues. Delbanco, by relying so heavily on original sources and taking a largely evenhanded approach, avoids that problem. Yes, he has a perspective, but he allows the people of the time – slaves, fugitive slaves, writers, politicians, judges, slaveowners, and abolitionists – to speak for themselves.

This should be required reading for high school students. This book was very informative and cover so much history. There wasn’t anything new here but was written very well. Get it, read it. 5 Stars

An extraordinary look at the history of "the slavery question" that puts to rest any of the false narratives. Slavery was the cause of the Civil War, and indeed, the cause of much of the strife from before out inception as a nation. Historian Andrew Delbanco describes in detail how the Founders dealt with the existing presence of slavery in half a nation that was created based on the idea that "all men are created equal." He traces the compromises made by the Founders in order to gather the disparate views into a national Constitution, and the attempts to restrict the expansion of slavery until such time as its ultimate extinction under its own weight of immorality. He discusses the various compromises during the first half of the 19th century to allow slaveholding states' to continue slavery while seeing it expand rather than contract. He shows how the Compromise of 1850, and in particular the strengthening of the Fugitive Slave law, led to a fundamental crisis between the choice of freedom and the choice to withhold others from their freedom. And the war came.This is a must-read book for all Americans. We as a nation must understand the role of slavery in our history...and how the residual effects of it still affect us today.

This is very readable, excellent book on the first half of the 19th century leading up to the Civil War. The focus is on the failed effort of the founders of the country, many of whom were slave owners themselves, to reconcile slavery with the enlightenment ideas of democracy and equality of men. The consequence of this failure was the problem of the union of slave states vs "free" states. Naturally, slaves (fugitives) tried constantly to flee to "free" states, leading to many attempts over the years, through legislation and other efforts to resolve the issue of what to do with "property" worth money, like a cow or horse, that became worthless in a "free" state.Things became steadily worse when new territories wanted to join the Union. Would they be slave states or free? The partisanship, vitriol, and total inability of congress to compromise in any way over time led to the Civil War. Which in hindsight created slavery under other names.Today more than 240 years later we are still dealing with slavery. Now we call it racism. Now we don't have chains and slave markets but they are there, invisible. This country will always have a race problem because the founders and many others throughout history did not believe in racial equality and never will.The founders left us with a flawed constitution because they kicked the can of slavery down the road. They wanted a Union of 13 states free of British rule. They were in denial and some believed slavery would just go away later on its own. While they were having esoteric conversations about democracy and freedom, some, like Thomas Jeffferson and James Madison, went home to their lavish estates maintained by slaves. We are dealing with a flawed country as a result. Wonder why our government functions so poorly now? Just read some history.

This is a brilliant book. It's odd, though. Every once in a while the writing quality lags with impossible to understand sentences. Fortunately, this is rare because the book in general reads well and thoughtfully discusses an important issue.

Andrew Delbanco has created an absolute master class of surgical and accurate precision in describing how the abhorrent practice of slavery began in the American Colonies and was later preserved by a concession from northern states to southern states demanding protection of continuing the immoral and unjust practice of slavery unabated in their states (i.e. the fugitive slave act written into the Constitution) for them to agree to join the United States.As we know, the compromise wouldn’t last and Civil War would result.This is a must read for anyone interested in learning the “original sin” of how America became the United States.