Slaughtering Abolition Democracy

26 Pages Posted: 7 Feb 2024

See all articles by Evan D. Bernick

Evan D. Bernick

Northern Illinois University - College of Law

Date Written: February 6, 2024

Abstract

The Supreme Court’s decision in The Slaughter-House Cases was released a day after the single bloodiest racial massacre in the history of Reconstruction. Mere miles from the slaughterhouse at constitutional issue, a White mob murdered scores of Black Republicans in Colfax, Louisiana at the encouragement of Democratic gubernatorial candidate John McEnery. The Colfax Massacre took place on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, and effectively ended Reconstruction in Louisiana. When the Court three years later overturned the convictions of the massacre’s ringleaders, it cited Slaughter-House.

Few ideas have proven more generative or inspirational on the American left than abolition democracy. As articulated by W.E.B. Du Bois in his magisterial Black Reconstruction, abolition democracy encompasses two closely related concepts. It was a large-Republican political bloc that emerged after the Civil War and played a leading role in Reconstruction. It is a political aspiration to build a small-r republican polity that is free of racialized domination. The coalition’s “splendid failure” to realize the aspiration was confirmed when Northern industrial capital withdrew its support for Reconstruction and the federal government withdrew troops from the former Confederate states. This Essay draws upon Du Bois’s concepts of abolition democracy and his account of the relationship between constitutionalism, economic power, and violence to understand and evaluate The Slaughter-House Cases and the work of the Reconstruction Court afresh.

Keywords: constitutional law, fourteenth amendment, Du Bois, Reconstruction, Black Reconstruction, Angela Davis, abolition democracy, Marxism, political economy, law and political economy, originalism, privileges or immunities

Suggested Citation

Bernick, Evan D., Slaughtering Abolition Democracy (February 6, 2024). Rutgers Law Journal Forthcoming, Northern Illinois University College of Law Legal Studies Research Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4718746 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4718746

Evan D. Bernick (Contact Author)

Northern Illinois University - College of Law ( email )

Swen Parson Hall
DeKalb, IL 60115
United States

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