Intro -- Contents -- Foreword: The Rocky Road to Freedom- Crucial Barriers to Abolition in the Antebellum Years -- 1. Introduction: The Thirteenth Amendment's Revolutionary Aims -- Part 1: Historical Settings -- 2. In Pursuit of Constitutional Abolitionism -- 3. The Civil War, Emancipation, and theThirteenth Amendment: Understanding Who Freed the Slaves -- 4. Citizenship and the Thirteenth Amendment: Understanding the Deafening Silence -- 5. Emancipation and Civic Status: The American Experience, 1865- 1915 -- 7. The Thirteenth Amendment and a New Dealfor Civil Rights -- 8. The Workers' Freedom of Association Underthe Thirteenth Amendment -- Part 2: Current Legal Landscapes -- 9. The Badges and Incidents of Slavery and the Power of Congress to Enforce the Thirteenth Amendment -- 10. The Promise of Congressional Enforcement -- 11. Protecting Full and Equal Rights: The Floor and More -- 12. Forced Labor Revisited: The Thirteenth Amendment and Abortion -- 13. The Slave Power Undead: Criminal Justice Successes and Failures of the Thirteenth Amendment -- 14. Toward a Thirteenth Amendment Exclusionary Ruleas a Remedy for Racial Profi ling -- 15. Immigrant Workers and the Thirteenth Amendment -- 16. A Thirteenth Amendment Agenda forthe Twenty- first Century: Of Promises, Power, and Precaution -- Epilogue: The Enduring Legacy of the Thirteenth Amendment -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Index.

In these original essays, America's leading historians and legal scholars reassess the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and its contemporary relevance to issues of liberty, justice, and equality. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, reasserting the radical, egalitarian dimensions of the Constitution. It laid the foundation for future civil rights and social justice legislation, yet subsequent reinterpretation and misappropriation has curbed more substantive change. With constitutional jurisprudence undergoing a revival, The Promises of Liberty provides a full historical portrait of the Thirteenth Amendment and its untapped potential for ensuring common liberties. The collection begins with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Brion Davis (Yale), who discusses the failure of the Thirteenth Amendment to achieve its framers' objectives. Davis is followed by James M. McPherson (Princeton), another Pulitzer recipient, who recounts the influence of abolitionists on the ratification process. Subsequent essays address Lincoln's commitment to ending slavery and the Thirteenth Amendment's surprisingly small role during and after Reconstruction. The anthology's third Pulitzer Prize winner, David M. Oshinsky (University of Texas, New York University), explains how peonage undermined the prohibition against compulsory service. Other essays relate the amendment to contemporary issues in organized labor, reproductive rights, and citizenship.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.