6 - Slavery, the District of Columbia, and the Constitution

Summary

This chapter follows the transformation of the issue of slavery in the nation’s capital into the 1830s across four sections. The first section provides the broad setting of a growing sense amongst abolitionists of the “Americanization” of slavery following the initiation of a gradual emancipation of slaves in the British Empire. Given the importance of the District for the domestic slave trade, examined in the second section, this reconceptualization was not without merit. The third section traces the ways in which immediate abolition and its reconceptualization of slavery within the District, in light of the trends discussed in the first and second sections, saw continuities but also important departures from the antislavery position on the District of Columbia in the 1820s. The final section examines the ways in which the District of Columbia grew in significance for defenders of slavery over roughly the same period.