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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