The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

An account of the Fugitive Slave Act and how the pursuit and return of escaped enslaved people deepened the sectional crisis between North and South, accelerating the path to civil war. Through the stories of individual fugitives and the politicians, judges, and abolitionists who debated their fate, Andrew Delbanco reconstructs the moral and political catastrophe of a nation that could not face its founding sin. Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction.