How Ideas in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution Shaped the Course of the Civil War.
Concessions to slaveowners in an effort to hold the Union together compromised the ideals of individual freedom set forth in the Declaration of Independence to result in an American society less free than the founders had envisioned. This paper traces the relationship of ideas in the Declaration and Constitution to the realities of slavery from 1776 through the Constitutional Convention, the Lincoln administration, and the end of the Civil War. 5 pgs. 9 f/c. 6b.