Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution

by Edited by Staughton Lynd , Foreword by Robin L. Einhorn

• ISBN13: 9780521132626
• ISBN10: 0521132622
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-17
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

First published in 1967, Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution was among the first studies to identify the importance of slavery to the founding of the American Republic. Provocative and powerful, this book offers explanations for the movements and motivations that underpinned the Revolution and the Early Republic. First, Staughton Lynd analyzes what motivated farm tenants and artisans during the period of the American Revolution. Second, he argues that slavery, and a willingness to compromise with slavery, were at the center of all political arrangements by the patriot leadership, including the United States Constitution. Third, he maintains that the historiography of the United States has adopted the mistaken perspective of Thomas Jefferson, who held that southern plantation owners were merely victimized agrarians. This new edition reproduces the original Preface by Edward P. Thompson and includes a new Afterword by Robin Einhorn that examines Lynd's arguments in the context of forty years of subsequent scholarship.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Class Conflict

Who should rule at home? Dutchess County, New York, in the American Revolution

The tenant rising at Livingston Manor, May 1777

The mechanics in New York politics, 1774-1785

A governing class on the defensive: the case of New York

Slavery

On Turner, Beard, and slavery

The abolitionist critique of the United States Constitution

The compromise of 1787

The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Historiography

Abraham Yates's history of the movement for the United States Constitution

Beard, Jefferson, and the tree of Liberty

Afterword

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