{"product_id":"what-the-law-protected-the-documentary-history-of-slavery-in-the-united-states-a-critical-annotated-edition","title":"What the Law Protected: The Documentary History of Slavery in the United States A Critical Annotated Edition","description":"\u003cp\u003eTo read this document in the twenty-first century is a disorienting and often disturbing experience. Its prose are polished, its citations are voluminous, its framing is calm and procedural but its premise is immoral. And that is precisely what makes it so dangerous as an artifact and so important as an object of study. The anonymous author does not rant but instead reasons, or performs the act of reasoning, with the methodical confidence of someone who expects his audience to accept his premises without question. He cites Cicero and Gibbon, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, the Treaty of Utrecht and the Treaty of Ghent, the Supreme Court and the Continental Congress. He builds his case brick by deliberate brick, and in doing so he reveals something that historians, legal scholars, and engaged citizens must confront. That the gravest injustices in American history were not carried out in spite of American institutions, but through them, and often with their explicit blessing. This annotated edition is offered to two audiences simultaneously. The first is the academic community, historians of the antebellum period, legal scholars tracing the constitutional dimensions of slavery, and researchers studying the ideological architecture of white supremacy in nineteenth-century America. For these readers, the original text is presented in full, with annotations that identify its sources, contest its distortions, and situate each chapter within its broader historical and legal context. The second audience is the general reader, or any person who wishes to understand how slavery persisted for so long in a nation that declared all men created equal, how the machinery of government was conscripted to protect it, and the risk that the same levers of power could be used again to suppress those who are viewed as less than human. For both audiences, the goal is the same. Not to rehabilitate this document, but to understand it, because understanding how such arguments were constructed is essential to recognizing their echoes in our own time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"None","offers":[{"title":"Kobo eBook","offer_id":46822722699474,"sku":"6edee131-be75-37bf-a71d-c90762ac425f","price":9.59,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0655\/8980\/5233\/files\/image_b4f37446-bf5a-4248-b6ad-cef3c37c5940.jpg?v=1777856833","url":"https:\/\/www.indigo.ca\/products\/what-the-law-protected-the-documentary-history-of-slavery-in-the-united-states-a-critical-annotated-edition","provider":"Indigo","version":"1.0","type":"link"}