This introductory chapter reflects upon the centrality of the Constitution to American political life and outlines the central themes of this book. It provides a summary of its overarching argument that the navigation of abolitionist pressure on slavery in the District of Columbia in the 1830s prompted a turn toward the concept of spirit, and particularly the spirit of 1787, within American constitutional thought. The chapter contains a plan of the subsequent chapters.

In this concluding chapter, I consider how the development of a particular attachment to the founding has shaped constitutional development in the United States and how an alterative grounding in the constitutional thought of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson might provide intellectual resources for a renewed democratic constitutionalism in contemporary American politics.

This section provides a discussion of different scholarly understandings of the constitutional Compact as conceived of in the 1830s.

This chapter examines the afterlife of the Compact of 1836 in abolitionist and proslavery thought. To a significant extent abolitionists after 1836 accepted the authority of the spirit of 1787 and sought to fashion an abolitionism within that framework. One strand of such a response was represented in the Garrisonian rejection of the Constitution as a legitimate authority. A second strand challenged the characterization of that spirit as protective of slavery through a claim that the Constitution represented an attempt by antislavery founders to grapple with the reality of slavery in their historical moment. In concert with these developments, after 1836 supporters of slavery began to refine their own understanding of the role of spirit in constitutional interpretation by prioritizing the recognition of slavery as a constitutional institution. To different ends both groups would gravitate in the 1840s toward a view of the Constitution as correctly understood only with reference to the attitudes that were prevalent at the time of its creation. Thus the legacy of the compact of 1836 would be a legitimization of the constitutional authority of 1787–88.

This chapter explores the emergence of the question of abolition within the District of Columbia in the presidential campaign of 1836. Over the course of the presidential campaign, Martin Van Buren sought to hone his position on the question of abolition in the District in response to the pressures he faced from southern Whigs. From an early position that abolition in the District would be inexpedient or impolitic, Van Buren shifted by his inaugural address to the position that such action was counter to “the spirit that actuated the venerated fathers of the republic,” while through campaign materials, public meetings, and official addresses, the Democrats developed the view that abolitionist activity aimed at altering the extant inter-State settlement on slavery was counter to the “spirit of deference, conciliation and mutual forbearance” that underwrote the federal compact. This approach enabled Van Buren and the Democrats to successfully navigate the 1836 election, but it also legitimized an appeal to spirit as a method of resolving constitutional disputes that had significant longer-term effects.