About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherCambridge University Press

ISBN-10110847814X

ISBN-139781108478144

eBay Product ID (ePID)3050094034

Product Key Features

Number of Pages336 Pages

Publication NameSlavery and Sacred Texts : The Bible, the Constitution, and Historical Consciousness in Antebellum America

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2021

SubjectUnited States / 19th Century, United States / General

TypeTextbook

AuthorJordan T. Watkins

Subject AreaHistory

SeriesCambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society Ser.

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1 in

Item Length9.3 in

Item Width6.3 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN2021-027026

Dewey Edition23/eng/20231023

Reviews'Watkins examines an impressively wide range of thinkers, white and Black, famous and forgotten, as they argued over whether Scripture and the Constitution (itself a kind of secular 'scripture') supported slavery - and if so, how opponents of slavery should respond. This important book not only illuminates the striking parallels between biblical criticism and constitutional interpretation, it will help Americans think through the racism at the root of so many of our institutions.' Dean Grodzins, author of American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal306.3/62097309034

Table Of ContentAcknowledgements; Prologue; Introduction; 1. 'Recourse must be had to the history of those times'; 2. 'The ground will shake'; 3. 'Texts ... designed for local and temporary use'; 4. 'The further we recede from the birth of the constitution'; 5. 'The culture of cotton has healed its deadly wound'; 6. 'Times now are not as they were'; 7. 'We have to do not ... with the past, but the living present'; 8. A 'Modern crispus attucks'; Conclusion; Epilogue; Index.

SynopsisIn the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation's sacred religious and legal texts - the Bible and the Constitution - to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates over slavery deepened interpreters' emphasis on historical readings of the sacred texts, and in turn, these readings began to highlight the unbridgeable historical distances that separated nineteenth-century Americans from biblical and founding pasts. While many Americans continued to adhere to a belief in the Bible's timeless teachings and the Constitution's enduring principles, some antislavery readers, including Theodore Parker, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln, used historical distance to reinterpret and use the sacred texts as antislavery documents. By using the debate over American slavery as a case study, Jordan T. Watkins traces the development of American historical consciousness in antebellum America, showing how a growing emphasis on historical readings of the Bible and the Constitution gave rise to a sense of historical distance., Using the debate over American slavery as a case study, Jordan T. Watkins analyzes the development of historical consciousness in antebellum America, showing how Americans' appeal to the nations' sacred and religious texts - the Bible and the Constitution - gave rise to a growing sense of historical distance.

LC Classification NumberE449