The Promises of Liberty

by Tsesis, Alexander

• ISBN13: 9780231141444
• ISBN10: 0231141440
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-09-15
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

In these original essays, America's leading historians and legal scholars reassess the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and its relevance to issues of liberty, justice, and equality. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, reasserting the radical, egalitarian dimensions of the Constitution. It also laid the foundations for future civil rights and social justice legislation. Yet subsequent reinterpretation and misappropriation have curbed more substantive change. With constitutional jurisprudence undergoing a revival, The Promises of Libertyprovides a full portrait of the Thirteenth Amendment and its potential for ensuring liberty.The collection begins with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Brion Davis, who discusses the failure of the Thirteenth Amendment to achieve its framers' objectives. The next piece, by Alexander Tsesis, provides a detailed account of the Amendment's revolutionary character. James M. McPherson, another Pulitzer recipient, recounts the influence of abolitionists on the ratification process, and Paul Finkelman focuses on who freed the slaves and President Lincoln's commitment to ending slavery. Michael Vorenberg revisits the nineteenth century's understanding of freedom and citizenship and the Amendment's surprisingly small role in the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods. William M. Wiecek shows how the Supreme Court's narrow interpretation once rendered the guarantee of freedom nearly illusory, and the collection's third Pulitzer Prize winner, David M. Oshinsky, explains how peonage undermined the prohibition against compulsory service.Subsequent essays relate the Thirteenth Amendment to congressional authority, hate crimes legislation, the labor movement, and immigrant rights. These chapters analyze unique features of the amendment along with its elusive meanings and affirm its power to reform criminal and immigration law, affirmative action policies, and the protection of civil liberties.

Table of Contents

Foreword: The Rocky Road to Freedom-Crucial Barriers to Abolition in the Antebellum Years	p. xi
Introduction: The Thirteenth Amendment's Revolutionary Aims	p. 1
Historical Settings
In Pursuit of Constitutional Abolitionism	p. 27
The Civil War, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment: Understanding Who Freed the Slaves	p. 36
Citizenship and the Thirteenth Amendment: Understanding the Deafening Silence	p. 58
Emancipation and Civic Status: The American Experience, 1865-1915	p. 78
Convict Labor in the Post-Civil War South: Involuntary Servitude After the Thirteenth Amendment	p. 100
The Thirteenth Amendment and a New Deal for Civil Rights	p. 119
The Workers' Freedom of Association Under the Thirteenth Amendment	p. 138
Current Legal Landscapes
The Badges and Incidents of Slavery and the Power of Congress to Enforce the Thirteenth Amendment	p. 163
The Promise of Congressional Enforcement	p. 182
Protecting Full and Equal Rights: The Floor and More	p. 196
Forced Labor Revisited: The Thirteenth Amendment and Abortion	p. 226
The Slave Power Undead: Criminal Justice Successes and Failures of the Thirteenth Amendment	p. 245
Toward a Thirteenth Amendment Exclusionary Rule as a Remedy for Racial Profiling	p. 266
Immigrant Workers and the Thirteenth Amendment	p. 279
A Thirteenth Amendment Agenda for the Twenty-first Century: Of Promises, Power, and Precaution	p. 291
Epilogue: The Enduring Legacy of the Thirteenth Amendment	p. 300
Acknowledgments	p. 319
List of Contributors	p. 321
Index	p. 325
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