The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

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.

Having read many books about the Civil War period, I was pleasantly surprised to find one that is both original and highly readable. The author deals with the plight of both slave and free blacks beginning with the colonial period. (Who knew that Ben Franklin had a slave?) He discusses the basic contradictions in the Constitution resulting from the founders attempt to accommodate slavery and the various attempts by the Northern states to frustrate slave catchers from the South through legal action and if, necessary, force. He also discusses the attempts to limit the spread of slavery: First came the Northwest Ordinance, which banned slavery in the territories that became Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin, then came the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which allowed slavery in Missouri but banned it north of the latitude of its southern border, then the Compromise of 1850 which allowed the putative states free choice or “popular sovereignty” in New Mexico and Utah and finally the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1853 which allowed popular sovereignty in all the remaining territories and enacted the Fugitive Slave Act.The author points out that those opposed to slavery did not necessarily believe in equal rights for blacks. Often opposition was based on a fear that blacks willing to work for low wages would take jobs away from whites (cf. the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1886). Even the most ardent abolitionists were uncertain of how free blacks would fit into society and some proposed deportation to Liberia.My only nitpick is one tedious chapter about how the literati, e.g. Melville, Hawthorne, Wordsworth, Longfellow, etc., portrayed the problem in their literature. Otherwise, a great book to have in your library.

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.

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.