Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

Free in the World: American Slavery and Constitutional Failure. By Mark E. Brandon. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. xviii, 248 pp. $39.50, isbn 0-691-01581-3.)

Dwelling on success distorts insights that arise from seeing things as they actually were, rather than in the light most favorable after the fact. Yet, Americans tend to dwell on the constitutional experience of the United States only as success, elevating it to civil religion and embracing its elements as articles of faith rather than subjecting them to rational demonstration. Mark E. Brandon begins on that bundled premise with an announced purpose of reevaluating conventional assumptions about the United States Constitution, viewing it not as a success but as a failure. 1

Taking a cue from English social philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Brandon notes that a constitution is merely words. And what, asks the University of Michigan political science professor, is the capacity of words to constrain politics? In exploring an answer, he focuses on American Negro slavery, arguing that its moral horror and malignant legacy, attached to the horrific sacrifice of civil war, demonstrate "the general problem of constitutional failure." More fully, he argues that "in the events leading up to and following the bloody campaigns of 1861 to 1865, Americans mislearned basic lessons about constitutionalism and the character of their own Constitution. In so doing, they have often missed the ways in which . . . their Constitution has failed." . . .

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