Article Review

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Course
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Constitutionally, Slavery Is No National Institution, Sean Wilentz, New York Times, 2015
One of the greatest contentions in the US’s history has been that of whether the constitution was proslavery or not. For many years, critics have argued that the US constitution safeguarded slavery. However, this article clearly opposes this notion, and the author outlines how the constitution helped degenerate slavery in the US in the lead up to the American Civil War in the mid-19th century.
Wilentz’s article debates on whether the US constitution as framed by our founding fathers was proslavery or antislavery. Many Southern States slaveholders like the then South Carolina Senator John Calhoun argued that the constitution was proslavery, whereas the Northern Republicans like Abraham Lincoln and lead abolitionists like Frederick Douglass resolutely opposed this notion that the constitution supported slavery (Wilentz). And despite the contention being settled by the Union victory in the Civil War, many scholars hold the view that the US was founded on segregation and slavery ideals. It is a dark history that has threatened to break the US, but the author disagrees with critics and supports Abraham Lincoln on the idea that the constitution paved the way for the abolition of slavery.
Apart from the constitutional issues related to slavery and its eventual abolition, the article touches on critical aspects of the causes of the civil war. The push-and-pull between the Southern and Northern states on the slavery matter and the need to preserve it by putting it in the constitution significantly contributed to these states’ conflicts.

Wilentz, like in the class notes, points out that the constitutional convention was the beginning of conflicts between the North and South, which culminated in the American Civil War. Before the war, the South threatened to secede due to the “unfair” antislavery laws and other constitutional clauses that barred them from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. In short, just as outlined in the class notes, Wilentz concludes by saying that devoid of the antislavery constitutional outcome in 1795, slavery extinction could not have been attained in 1865.
This article is quite effective in dispelling the contentions about the constitutional position of racial slavery. The author outlays the truth about the causes of the North and South conflicts that led up to the Civil War. It points out the constitution is not the problem, but the implementers and the American society that still holds archaic beliefs about racial segregation and inequality.
Work Cited
Wilentz, Sean. “Constitutionally, Slavery Is No National Institution.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Sept. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/opinion/constitutionally-slavery-is-no-national-institution.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer.