| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Alexander Tsesis. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press. 2004. Pp. x, 229. $45.00.

In part one of this monograph, Alexander Tsesis analyzes nineteenth-century legal and social history for evidence that the Thirteenth Amendment not only abolished African slavery in the United States but also normatively expressed the intrinsic value of freedom for any group of persons arbitrarily identified by characteristics of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. The author erroneously states this latter condition as "sexual preference" (p. 5), thus endangering his analysis of arbitrary rather than freely chosen characteristics. In part two, he argues that the amendment sustains a distinctive, contemporary basis for prosecuting public or private restrictions on various freedoms (to choose a marriage partner, to travel, to educate children, etc.). Ultimately, Tsesis speculates on the amendment's utility for penalizing civic displays of Confederate symbols, hate crimes, and peonage. Historians will most probably attend to the initial analysis, although the latter speculation makes for intriguing reading.

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