Slavery and the founders

by Paul Finkelman

"In this third edition of Slavery and the Founders, including a new chapter on the regulation and eventual banning of the African slave trade, Paul Finkelman confronts a central issue of the American founding: how the first generation of leaders of the United States dealt with the profoundly important question of human bondage. The book explores the tension between the professed idea of America as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and the reality of the early American republic, reminding us of the ways that slavery influenced the writing of the Constitution and the development of early national politics and law. The book remains the most important short critique of Thomas Jefferson's relationship to slavery, and contrasts the way Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans approached the problem of slavery in the first thirty years after the Revolution"--Unedited summary from book cover.