"There's No End to This Story” – A Discussion on Slavery in America
Dr. Andrew Delbanco presenting the Black History Month Lecture | Photo by Abby Roth
Dr. Andrew Delbanco presented Kings’ Black History Month lecture based on his most recent book which delves into how slavery, specifically the desire to escape slavery, shaped American history more than we tend to give it credit. The talk took place in the City Room on Thursday, Feb. 9.
Delbanco is an acclaimed Columbia University professor whose written works focus primarily on American History and Literature. The book that his lecture was based on, The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul, from the Revolution to the Civil War, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named a New York Times notable book in 2019.
The lecture began by examining the question of where to start the stories of those attempting to escape slavery. One might look to the Atlantic system in West Africa, where, Delbanco remarked, it was painfully apparent that “Africans didn’t want to be enslaved. Nobody wants to be enslaved.”
Delbanco pointed out that slavery “is a phenomenon hardly unique to the United States.” This race-based chattel slavery that dominated much of the early Enlightenment Era was simply the newest form of such a “satanic process.” He argued that no matter where one begins the story, one discovers that “as long as slavery had been around, so has the impulse to escape.”
The narrative of his book tracks the impact that diverging opinions on enslavement made on the burgeoning nation.
“The experiences of those who attempted to escape from slavery, [and their] centrality to our collective American history, has not yet been fully grasped,” Delbanco said.
From the Act to Prevent Runaways of 1683 to the Fugitive Slave clause in the Constitution to even the Constitutional Convention in 1787, where the Founding Fathers knew “they were representing two different countries,” Delbanco argued that the plight of enslaved people is integral to our understanding of our American history.
Delbanco divulged story after story of the conflict between the states’ differing legislation on slavery. One such story was of a slave, who, after residing in Philadelphia for over six months and thus legally free, met another obstacle as his master refused to agree. “I am a citizen of South Carolina,” the master said. “What do the laws of Pennsylvania have to do with me?”
Delbanco also noted that famous founding father James Madison believed the laws of the states were “uncharitable to one another” on the topic of slavery.
Delbanco’s point was that a continually cited cause of the civil war—states’ rights—has often “been a euphemism for sheer, plain old racism.” The conflicts the states were constantly embattled over were the regulations and provisions for slavers.
In 1850, Congress passed “An Act respecting Fugitives of Justice and Persons escaping the Service of their Masters,” commonly referred to as “The Fugitive Slave Law.” Delbanco explained how Northerners were confronted with injustice like never before. For the government to be able to aid slavers throughout the Union meant that suddenly slavery was “not far away. [It was] next door.”
The lecture concluded with a closing thought from Mark Twain; “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” According to Delbanco, our country seems exceedingly similar today to the time when chattel slavery was still an all-encompassing force.
“We live in the present with the persistence of the past,” Delbanco said.“I don’t need to elaborate why this is, in 2023, a rhyming story for Black Americans.”
Students listen as Delbanco walks them through the history of slavery in America | Photo by Abby Roth
“People profoundly opposed to slavery cited Scripture…and people in favor of slavery cited Scripture,” said Delbanco in response to a question about American slavery’s relationship to Christianity. “[Christian] citizens had to contend and confront the problem: what do you do if your conscience…with certain convictions is at odds with the secular law of the land?”
“I learned a lot of things. I never would associate the north [with slavery],” Eldaa Ouedraogo, a freshman in the House of Corrie Ten Boom said. “That was very interesting, that he brought that perspective. I really enjoyed it, honestly.”
“From the jump, he encouraged us to step out of [personal bias] and to look at it as a piece of history. Looking at the realities of it…is going to help us know who to go forward and correct the problems we are still seeing,” said Macy Farr, a senior in the House of Sojourner Truth.
Colby McCaskill is a freshman at The King’s College majoring in Journalism, Culture and Society. He is also the City Editor for the Empire State Tribune. He loves to write and enjoys long runs in the rain.