well I agree with Constantine that separation have destroyed slvery more
quickly, but the expamles he offers are hardly the stuff of a breach of
understanding.

Constantine Gutzman wrote:

> Paul Finkelman says, "I would ask Constantine, whose analysis I also find
> interesting and useful, to
> offer some concrete examples of how in 1861 the bargain was breached."  In
> my understanding, there were two main ways.  First, the personal liberty
> laws were violations of the Constitution's clear requirement that fugitive
> slaves be returned to their masters.  (Here, I agree with Justice Joseph
> Story, not Prof. Finkelman, on the issue of the fugitive slave clause's role
> in insuring that the southernmost two states would join the Union in the
> first place; yet, I concede that the evidence is not clear-cut.  Still, even
> if I didn't agree with Story, the fugitive slave clause was part of the
> original Constitution.)
>
> Secondly, Lincoln's election as a purely sectional candidate whose platform
> included both of the positions southerners had found most threatening ever
> since 1787 (anti-slavery and the promise of a record high tariff -- bane of
> George Mason, Patrick Henry, William Branch Giles, Littleton Waller
> Tazewell, and a host of other Virginian statesmen, not to mention of other
> southerners) augured permanent subjugation of the South.  (Yes, I know,
> Lincoln repeatedly said that his had not been an anti-slavery candidacy.  He
> also said, however, that slavery would die as a result of his policy of
> keeping it out of the territories.  Even if one doubts that
> prognostication's validity, the man who made it cannot be seen as having
> been other than anti-slavery.  Indeed, I do not quite know why anyone wants
> to deny that Lincoln was anti-slavery, except that denying it helps absolve
> him of responsibility for the outcome of the secession crisis.)
>
> I agree with Garrison that the original Constitution was a covenant with
> death.  However, it seems to me that the way to get out of it was not simply
> to insist on having the full benefit of union with slaveholders (e.g., the
> tariff revenues) without any of the pain.  Instead, allowing withdrawal of
> the southern states from the Union would have given the North a perfectly
> just ground for refusing to return fugitives.  In relatively short order, I
> think, a societal crisis similar to that which resulted from the war would
> have followed upon Union refusal to help enforce the slave system -- or even
> Union encouragement of slaves to flee.  Of course, that is speculation.
>
> Prof. K.R. Constantine Gutzman
> Department of History
> Western Connecticut State University
>
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--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, OK  74104-3189

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