"A COVENANT WITH DEATH, AND AN AGREEMENT WITH HELL": 1856 EXPANDED AND REVISED EDITION OF ABOLITIONIST WENDELL PHILLIPS' CONSTITUTION A PRO-SLAVERY COMPACT

PHILLIPS, Wendell. The Constitution. A Pro-Slavery Compact: Or, Extracts from the Madison Papers, Etc. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1856. Octavo, original gilt- and blind-stamped dark brown cloth; pp. (1-5),6-208. $1400.

Second revised edition, third overall, of Phillips' influential work, pivotal to abolitionists calling for radical dissolution of the union, published the year before the Dred Scott decision, here arguing the 1787 Constitution's three-fifths clause, its Fugitive Slave clause and other key provisions demonstrated "there was not the slightest trace of freedom in the pro-slavery Constitution."

Phillips shared with Garrison and William Bowditch a view of the 1787 Constitution as undeniably pro-slavery: "a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell" (Fehrenbacher, Slave-Holding Republic, 39). Here he points to its five provisions as clear evidence of this view: the three-fifths clause; the "limitation on the power of Congress to prohibit the 'migration or importation' of slaves until 1808"; the Fugitive Slave clause; "the clause affording Congress the power to suppress insurrection; the clause insuring, upon application from a state, federal assistance in the suppression of domestic violence" (Cover, Justice Accused, 151-52). With these, "slaves would be counted for representation in Congress, thus augmenting the South's power in both the House of Representatives and the electoral college." Further, free states were prohibited "from liberating fugitive slaves" and instead were required to ensure that they be "'delivered up' on demand of the owner" (Finkelman, Founders and Slavery, 144-45). Phillips' work is "a masterpiece of compilation of all then available data on the intentions and opportunities of the framers of the U.S. Constitution with respect to slavery" (Cover, 151n). He particularly references the 1840 publication of James Madison's Notes on constitutional debates, contending this made "it clear that the Framers struck a compromising deal with the devil… confirmed by the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court, which repeatedly interpreted the Constitution as offering no legal sanctuary for the nation's enslaved population" (Knowles, Seeing the Light, 532).

To Phillips, one of the most eloquent of the Garrisonians, "there was not the slightest trace of freedom in the pro-slavery Constitution—a compact… 'cemented with human blood'—and there could be no hope of redeeming it" (Wilentz, No Property in Man, 228-29). While Phillips' influence was central in promoting this argument—"not until the judicial claims and successes of proslavery forces between 1840 and 1860—the gag rule, the Amistad and the Creole, the Mexican War, the new Fugitive Act of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska, and finally Dred Scott—was this vision given a degree of credibility" (Cover, 209-10). The 1787 Constitution "ultimately proved unable to bring a legal end to slavery in the U.S., and it took the 13th Amendment… to strike the specter of slavery from the text of the Constitution. However, many members of the antislavery community concluded that slavery was actually unconstitutional" (Knowles, 532-33). "Third Edition, Enlarged" on title page: preceded by the 1844 first edition; 1845 "first enlarged edition." Bookplate of William P. Palmer. Small embossed stamp of Western Reserve Historical Society to title page, margin (p.49).

Text fresh with faintest scattered foxing. Expert restoration to inner hinges, pastedowns, and original cloth.