The famous negotiations that offered concessions to the slaveholders come across more like abject submission. Although he calls it the вЂњcompromise Constitution,вЂќ FeldmanвЂ™s Constitution was almost seamlessly pro-slavery. Indeed, Feldman roots his interpretation of Lincoln and slavery in what he now calls the вЂњcompromise ConstitutionвЂќ that Madison and the other framers hammered out - the Constitution, he says, that Lincoln would eventually break.ДЇrom the start, however, FeldmanвЂ™s depiction of the ConstitutionвЂ™s connection to slavery is questionable. вЂњThe Broken ConstitutionвЂќ can be read as a sequel to that book, connecting the nationвЂ™s founding and early years to what Lincoln called the вЂњastoundingвЂќ outcome of the Civil War. A lucid, provocative stylist and an expert in fields ranging from Islamic politics to the American separation of church and state, he is widely known for an illuminating political biography of James Madison.

Less than perfect, unfortunately, are the renderings of American history he offers to support his surprising thesis.ДЄ professor at Harvard Law School and a prolific scholar and commentator on current affairs, Feldman is well equipped to assess LincolnвЂ™s constitutional record. Only then, Feldman concludes, paradoxically, could America redeem its claims to nobility by purging the original sin of slavery, refounding itself by embracing what he calls a new, expansive вЂњmoral Constitution.вЂќДЇeldmanвЂ™s reliance on Jefferson Davis to frame a book on Abraham Lincoln thus makes perfect sense: Aside from the slaveholdersвЂ™ insistence on the ethical legitimacy of slavery, FeldmanвЂ™s constitutional analysis consistently backs their arguments over LincolnвЂ™s. Moreover, Feldman argues, despite LincolnвЂ™s professed fidelity to the framersвЂ™ work, he was the one who finally broke the Constitution during the Civil War by turning the presidency into a quasi dictatorship, much as his Confederate and Copperhead enemies alleged he did. On both points, though, Feldman contends that Davis was right and Lincoln was wrong. Instead, Lincoln charged that the insurrection Davis helped to lead was вЂњthe essence of anarchy.вЂќ Unlike Davis, Lincoln never believed that the Constitution had been broken, even after the slaveholders began their rebellion in 1860-61.

The framers, Davis pronounced, had enshrined in the Constitution the right to hold property in humans, but frenzied antislavery Northerners undermined the law of the land and now the flood was surging, pouring вЂњturgid waters through the broken Constitution.вЂќДavisвЂ™s pro-slavery remarks provide Noah Feldman with both the epigraph and the title of his new book about Jefferson DavisвЂ™s nemesis, Abraham Lincoln, which seems a very odd choice.

(Exactly 11 years later, Davis would take office as the president of the Confederate States of America.) A flood of antislavery fanaticism and sectional hatred, Davis declaimed, had opened a вЂњmoral crevasseвЂќ that endangered AmericaвЂ™s very foundations. Senate that would lead to the famous congressional compromise over slavery later that year, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi delivered a florid floor speech that lamented the impending ruin of the nation. Over the course of two days in February 1850, amid the debates in the U.S.

THE BROKEN CONSTITUTION Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America By Noah Feldman

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