How fugitive slaves exposed the idea of the 'United' States as a lie

The fugitive slave clause might have been enshrined in the Constitution, but it initially proved difficult to enforce

The War Before the War

Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul From the Revolution to the Civil War

Andrew Delbanco

Penguin Press

453 pages; $30

Despite its title, Andrew Delbanco’s The War Before the War isn’t so much about confrontation as it is about the earnest, and often self-defeating, methods used to avoid it.

Mr Delbanco chose to focus his account on fugitive slaves because their plight, he says, “exposed the idea of the ‘united’ states as a lie.” From the beginning of the Republic the slave system was embedded in the Constitution, even if the framers declined to name it as