This book argues that conflicts over slavery and abolition in the early American Republic generated a mode of constitutional interpretation that remains powerfu

Demonstrates the crucial role that the Constitution played in the coming of the Civil War.

Explains the origins of the Fourteenth Amendment's birthright citizenship provision, as a story of black Americans' pre-Civil War claims to belonging.

In this broad ranging and powerful study, Gregg Crane examines the interaction between civic identity, race and justice in American law and literature. Crane re

An analysis of the development of historical consciousness in antebellum America, using the debate over slavery as a case study.