GEORGIA LAW REVIEW - StephanKinsella.com

UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
stroy the other ."63
The evolution of the controversy revealed that libertarians and
their pro-slavery opponents subscribed to two social and political
theories so radically at odds that the protagonists differed even on
the meanings of such central terms as "liberty" and "equality."
Moreover, their disagreement extended as well to the construction
and application of the Declaration of Independence and the Consti-
tution. To one group, the Declaration was an instrument of govern-
ment, with practical force. To the other, it was merely an abstract
political statement, with no pragmatic application. To one group,
the Constitution embodied natural rights, and therefore discounte-
nanced, if it did not outlaw, slavery. To the other, the Constitution
established and protected slavery, thereby denying natural rights.
This conflict forced libertarians to re-evaluate what they meant by
"liberty, " "equality, " and "natural rights, " and what role these
concepts play in the Declaration and the Constitution.
The Slave Power had its own ideas. After the death of Jefferson,
a new political philosophy arose at the South that discarded
natural-law precepts for the positivistic thesis that rights are noth-
ing more than what "society" acknowledge^:^^ In addition, with
Jacksonian democracy, the "common man" increasingly assumed
political power in the Southern States-bringing with that assump-
tion the majority's traditional intolerance for minority opinion.
These two forces, positivism and democracy, coalesced on the
slavery-question: The democrats supported the vast complex of
"property" rights established in the slave-system; and apologists for
the slave-holders encouraged the masses' racial bigotry and their
suppression of anti-slavery sentiment throughout Southern society.
Both intended to keep the South a "white-man's country."65
Unable to reconcile the "peculiar institution" with natural rights,
pro-slavery intellectuals abandoned natural law entirely. After
about 1830, Southern literature championed the notions that men
have no unalienable rights, and that slavery is the natural state of
mankind and freedom an artificial and unworkable form of social
organization. Similarly, Southern spokesmen denied the concept of
equality stated in the Declaration of Independence, or re-
interpreted it to assert that slavery alone guarantees "true" equal-
R3 Rev. A. Granger, A Sermon Preached in Meriden, Connecticut 5 (1853).
n4 See W. DODD, THE COTTON KINGDOM: A CHRONICLE OF THE OLD SOUTH
A5 Phillips, The Central Theme of Southern History, 34 AM. HIST. REV. 30 (1928).
C. iii (1919).