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Book Review
| Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xviii + 305. $29.95 (ISBN 0-521-65267-7).
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| In the last couple of decades, legal scholars have frequently turned to the Thirteenth Amendment to broaden the basis of civil rights. From physician-assisted suicide to battered women to abortion, the amendment has been used to argue about social relations and practices that appear to have some relationship to slavery. Scholars pursuing this agenda are likely to be frustrated, if not indeed angered, by Michael Vorenberg's new book, Final Freedom. Seeking to "place the amendment in its proper historical context by recreating the climate in which the measure was drafted, debated, and adopted," he maintains that historians must understand "the fluid interaction between politics, law, and society in the Civil War era." (3). Following this tack leads Vorenberg to the conclusion that the amendment has no single original meaning and that it was "above all, a product of historical contingency" (3). The significance of the amendment, then, consists not in its original intent, but in its relation to three main historical developments: the struggle in the Civil War era to define freedom; the changing nature of party politics; and above all, a reconceptualization of the amending process and the Constitution itself. |
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Vorenberg's most important contribution lies in the third of these areas. Throughout, he argues the case that the Thirteenth Amendment fundamentally changed the ways Americans looked at the Constitution. "More than any other measure since the Bill of Rights," Vorenberg declares, "the Thirteenth Amendment allowed Americans to conceive of the Constitution as a document that could be altered without being sacrificed" (6). While differing sharply about the Constitution's guidance on the issue of slavery, antebellum Americans generally agreed that the Constitution was a static, if not sacred, text. The war's destructiveness, however, led more and more Americans to question the sanctity of the founders. Originally articulated by War Democrats who opposed the amendment, a new consensus began to emerge—that "the Constitution could be amended to enact social reforms rejected or unimagined by the framers" (197). Vorenberg's development of this theme is sophisticated and persuasive. While one might ask precisely how an amendment so forgotten for a century provided a "signal to later generations" (197), Vorenberg provides a compelling explanation for the origins of activist constitutionalism. |
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Another strength of the book is its careful analysis of the relationship between party politics and constitutional change. Vorenberg argues persuasively that supporters of emancipation did not initially see constitutional amendment as the favored form of abolition. African-Americans, in particular, were not the "true authors" of the amendment as some historians have argued. In fact, most black abolitionists saw the formal abolition of chattel bondage as limiting a wider agenda of civil equality, economic empowerment, and suffrage rights. The amendment came not out of a broad vision or a grass-roots movement but out of a "peculiarly moderate" answer to "the problem of how to make emancipation legal and permanent" (86). In fact, party politics drove the amendment to the center of discussions about emancipation. As some War Democrats began to consider support for the amendment, Republicans increasingly saw it as a way of defining a party that had achieved many of its original goals. Debating the amendment in an election year meant that it got more attention, but politicking also left a "tragic" (140) legacy of clouded meaning as Republicans rendered the amendment purposefully vague in order to attract the broadest support. As with the amending process, Vorenberg's exploration of the politics of constitutional change is detailed and sophisticated—far more so than can be captured here—yet it leaves some issues unclear. He seems uncertain about the level and importance of popular support for the amendment, and he perhaps overstates the extent to which electioneering influenced what congressmen had to say. |
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The book's least original, but probably most controversial, point is about the ambiguities of freedom in the Civil War era. Historians following the lead of Eric Foner have promoted this idea for years, but when applied to the amending process and directed at legal scholars, it takes on new meaning. Vorenberg argues against original intent throughout but puts the case most bluntly near the end of the book: "The quest to determine which interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment is most credible or most authoritative is endless and, to a certain extent, pointless, for the measure never had a single, fixed meaning," he declares (237; emphasis in original). While Vorenberg's emphasis on "the contingency of events and ideas" (237) is laudable, he risks missing larger structural developments. Debate over the amendment did bring to the fore competing visions about the economic future of the country, some that harkened back to an older vision of a producer's republic, others that looked to the developing structures of liberal-capitalism. While there was certainly no unitary definition of "freedom," definable options did exist, options with roots far back in Anglo-American law rather than simply in the contingencies of the moment. |
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While some questions can be raised about Vorenberg's overall conclusions, the book nonetheless stands as a model of how to do constitutional history. To call Vorenberg's research exhaustive would be a drastic understatement. Deeply versed in the secondary literature, he goes beyond legislative and judicial sources to examine hundreds of manuscript collections and scores of newspapers and pamphlets. What emerges is a much fuller picture of the Thirteenth Amendment and the process of constitutional change in general. As such, Final Freedom will likely stand as the definitive work on constitutional emancipation for years to come. |
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| James D. Schmidt
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| Northern Illinois University |
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