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Podcast: New Books in Law
Episode: Timothy Messer-Kruse, "Slavery’s Fugitives and the Making of the United States Constitution" (LSU Press, 2024)
Description: Slavery's Fugitives and the Making of the United States Constitution (LSU Press, 2024) unearths a long-hidden factor that led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. While historians have generally acknowledged that patriot leaders assembled in response to postwar economic chaos, the threat of popular insurgencies, and the inability of the states to agree on how to fund the national government, Timothy Messer-Kruse suggests that scholars have discounted Americans' desire to compel Britain to return fugitives from slavery as a driving force behind the convention.
During the Revolutionary War, British governors offered freedom to enslaved Americans who joined the king's arm...