Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) ("The explosive sectional controversy over the expansion of slavery into newly conquered territories, which tore at the heart of mid-nineteenth century America and paved the way for the Civil War, presented a golden opportunity for Carolinian planter politicians to impart to their section the political ideology of slavery, with its ideal of an independent southern nation. . . . It is in this context that South Carolina's exceptionalism became pertinent and influential. Not bound by party allegiance or democratic practice, Carolinian planter politicians championed the cause of their class and section, Calhoun's notion of state sovereignty became the basis of the southern position on slavery in the territories and on the right to secession. Not just formal constitutional and political arguments, but the vindication of slavery as a superior way of ordering society and of a separate southern identity based on slavery would constitute the discourse of southern nationalism. During nullification, Carolinian politicos had developed a systematic defense of slavery and the slaveholding minority in a democratic republic. The slavery expansion conflict fostered southern nationalism, which pointed to the inescapable conclusion that slavery was a higher good than the American republic." Id. at 63-64. Query. To what extent would an updated version of the following 1861 statement, by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, find favorable sentiment in early twenty-first century America? "The prevailing ideas entertained by . . . most of the leading statement at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were that the enslavement of the African was in violation, of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. . . . Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great turn that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. . . . [O]ur new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." Id. at 254. Or, to put it another way, to what extent do Americans (or, at least, the so-called 'Silent Majority") believe that people of colors, notably Blacks and Hispanics, should have second-class status? "Historians, like contemporaries, have long noted that an overwhelming majority of South Carolinians were for secession. But a majority of South Carolinians had noting to do with secession or the glorification of human bondage. A majority of South Carolinians in 1860 were slaves." Id. at 258.).
Manisha Sinha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2016) ("The conflict over the contours and nature of American democracy has often centered on debates over black freedom and rights. The origins of that momentous and ongoing political struggle lie in the movement to abolish slavery. This book tells the story of abolition. . . . Abolition was a radical, interracial movement, one which addressed the entrenched problems of exploitation and disenfranchisement in a liberal democracy and anticipated debates over race, labor and empire." Id. at 1. "The abolition legacy for American democracy lies hidden in plain sight. . . . The age of Obama, like the age of Lincoln, has its critics and its admirers, but neither would have been possible without the abolition movement." "The enduring heritage of the abolition movement is even broader: its unyielding commitment to human rights and a call to action, however much abolitionists disagreed on tactics and ideas until the end. Demonstrating the potential of democratic radicalism is no mean achievement. Their wide-ranging activism was, as Du Bois put it, 'the finest thing in American history'." Id. at 591.).
