Clear-eyed, incisive, and necessary…
Seasoned constitutional scholar and trial lawyer McWhirter delivers a deeply researched and morally charged narrative that confronts the central truth of American history that reveals how the Framers enshrined contradiction at the heart of the republic. Drawing on legal insight and history, he shows how liberty was proclaimed by men who upheld slavery. The contradiction wasn’t a flaw; it was foundational. America began split between a republic of rights and an aristocracy of bondage, a divide that led to civil war in 1860.
The heart of the book lies in its treatment of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments—what McWhirter calls America’s “new birth of freedom.” The Thirteenth abolished slavery, though McWhirter notes the loophole that allowed involuntary servitude “as punishment for crime,” fueling convict leasing and mass incarceration. The Fourteenth redefined citizenship and promised equal protection, but courts and legislatures quickly undermined its power. The Fifteenth guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race, only to be gutted by Jim Crow laws and, in more recent times, voter suppression efforts.
McWhirter brings legal history to life by anchoring it in the human cost of injustice. His view of slavery as a continuous state of war adds depth and urgency. What gives the book its power, though, is his focus on Black resistance. Long before the law recognized their rights, African Americans fought for their own freedom, asserting their agency against a system built to deny it. Throughout, McWhirter returns to a central question: Will we be a “government by the people, of the people, and for the people” or not? This is a book not just about what was written into law, but what remains unwritten in practice. It is a call to reckon honestly with our past and to confront the unfinished business of democracy.
Essential reading for readers of constitutional law, American history or civil rights as well as for anyone seeking to understand how the law has both betrayed and propelled the promise of American democracy.
Pub date September 28, 2022
Twelve Tables Press
ISBN 978-1946074386
Price $24.99 (USD) Paperback, $16.99 Kindle edition
