Conclusion

Summary

The conclusion summarizes the book’s central contention that antebellum interpretive debates over slavery encouraged contextual readings of sacred texts and deepened a sense of historical distance from America’s favored biblical and founding pasts. It restates the argument that while some aimed to set aside the historical distance and change their readings revealed, others used distance and change in advancing new readings of the Bible and, especially, the Constitution. The conclusion narrates how Theodore Parker, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln continued to use historical distance and the insight of historical contingency in working towards slavery’s abolition. Douglass found hope in Lincoln’s election, the Civil War, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and despite crucial differences between them, Douglass and Lincoln continued to advance antislavery readings of the Constitution based in the framers’ expectation of abolition. This reading gave shape to Lincoln’s Proclamation and his Gettysburg Address. The conclusion also indicates the limitations of approaches like Lincoln’s and emphasizes the need today for new kinds of historical narratives and new kinds of actions.