Ep. 69: Patrick Rael on the Abolitionist Struggle and the Long Death of Slavery

In this episode, Luke talks with Patrick Rael, a professor of history at Bowdoin College and the author of several books, including Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North and Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865.The discussion covers a wide range of topics, including how colonists invoked ideas of slavery before the revolution to “perform powerful rhetorical work”; how slavery factors into the Framers’ 1787 Constitution, and why northern delegates conceded the three-fifths clause in the face of threats from the South to leave the union; why the plantation regime in the U.S. South so powerful; how revolutionary ideas flowed across borders; how we should understand Reconstruction, both in the context of the United States and in the context of international abolitionism; and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Patrick also mentions Edmund Morgan’s “Slavery and Freedom” during the conversation.