Description
This engaging history overturns the conventional wisdom about the Second Amendment--showing that the right to bear arms was not about protecting liberty but about preserving slavery. In Madison's Militia, Carl Bogus illuminates why James Madison and the First Congress included the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights. Linking together dramatic accounts of slave uprisings and electric debates over whether the Constitution should be ratified, Bogus shows that--contrary to conventional wisdom--the fitting symbol of the Second Amendment is not the musket in the hands of the minuteman on Lexington Green but the musket wielded by a slave patrol member in the South. Bogus begins with a dramatic rendering of the showdown in Virginia between James Madison and his federalist allies, who were arguing for ratification of the new Constitution, and Patrick Henry and the antifederalists, who were arguing against it. Henry accused Madison of supporting a constitution that empowered Congress to disarm the militia, on which the South relied for slave control. The narrative then proceeds to the First Congress, where Madison had to make good a congressional campaign promise to write a Bill of Rights--and seizing that opportunity to solve the problem Henry had raised. Three other collections of stories--on slave insurrections, Revolutionary War battles, and the English Declaration of Rights--are skillfully woven into the narrative and show how arming ragtag militias was never the primary goal of the amendment. And as the puzzle pieces come together, even initially skeptical readers will be surprised by the completed picture: one that forcefully demonstrates that the Second Amendment was intended in the first instance to protect slaveholders from the people they owned.
About the Author
Carl T. Bogus is a Professor of Law Emeritus at the Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island. He has also held visiting positions at the George Washington, Drexel, and Rutgers University law schools. He is the author of two previous books--Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism (Bloomsbury Press) and Why Lawsuits Are Good for America: Disciplined Democracy, Big Business, and the Common Law (NYU Press)--and the editor of The Second Amendment in Law and History: Historians and Constitutional Scholars on the Right to Bear Arms (The New Press). His writings have appeared in professional journals as well as the New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, The Nation, American Prospect, American Conservative, and other popular venues.
Reviews
A vital reconsideration of a contentious constitutional amendment. * Publishers Weekly *
Readers interested in the Second Amendment's origins or in assessing arguments about its meaning will likely and deeply appreciate this comprehensive history. * Library Journal *
At a time when the Supreme Court is increasingly looking at the original meaning in interpreting the Constitution, Professor Carl Bogus has written a riveting account of how the Second Amendment actually came to be added to the Constitution. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Professor Bogus shows that the Second Amendment was meant to protect the slave system and keep Congress from disarming slave patrols. This is an essential history for all lawyers, judges, students, and individuals who are researching the original understanding of the Second Amendment and gun rights. * Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law *
A surprisingly fast-paced account of the events leading up to the Second Amendment. Bogus persuasively suggests that, while Madison and other Founders paid lip-service to the dedication of militias and the threat of standing armies, their primary concern was to suppress insurrections by the people they enslaved. Madison's Militia undermines any claim by the Roberts Court/the Supreme Court to locate the individual right to bear arms in an originalist reading of the Constitution. * Jeannine DeLombard, author of In the Shadow of the Gallows: Race, Crime, and American Civic Identity *
Bogus offers a fresh and fearless investigation into why Madison and his contemporaries added the right to keep and bear arms to the Constitution. Uncluttered by myth or hagiography, this book will likely become the definitive account of the darker side of the Second Amendment's drafting and ratification. * Darrell A.H. Miller, Duke Law School *
Carl Bogus makes an important contribution to efforts to discern the meaning of the 27 words that make up the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Bogus' work provides a rich context to understand what those who drafted and debated the amendment faced, as well as what they hoped to accomplish. Bogus invites readers to reconsider the racially neutral right to bear arms that the amendment protects in light of the immediate racialized threat of uprisings and rebellions by enslaved people against their enslavers. His book offers a radically different way to read and understand the amendment which aligns with, rather than revises, the history surrounding its ratification. * Lisa A. Crooms-Robinson, Professor, Howard University School of Law *
Slavery was the main event-not a sideshow-as the U.S. was founded. In this insightful, crisply written book Carl Bogus tells us that what impelled the now infamous Second Amendment was precisely the rampant fear of slave insurrections, necessitating the formation of a well-armed militia. * Gerald Horne, author, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America *
Madison's Militia offers an illuminating overview of the tangled history of the Second Amendment and its 'right to bear arms.' Whatever the limitations of citizen militias in actually fighting wars, they were indispensable in Virginia and other states worried about suppressing any slave rebellions and about the possibility that the new national government would prove insufficiently protective of slavery. American historians are increasingly studying the intersections of slavery and a desire to maintain white supremacy, and Bogus provides a valuable, extremely well-written, demonstration of those intersections. * Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School and author of Framed: America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance *
Book Information
ISBN 9780197632222
Author Carl T. Bogus
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 123mm * 274mm * 30mm
About the Author
Carl T. Bogus is a Professor of Law Emeritus at the Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island. He has also held visiting positions at the George Washington, Drexel, and Rutgers University law schools. He is the author of two previous books--Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism (Bloomsbury Press) and Why Lawsuits Are Good for America: Disciplined Democracy, Big Business, and the Common Law (NYU Press)--and the editor of The Second Amendment in Law and History: Historians and Constitutional Scholars on the Right to Bear Arms (The New Press). His writings have appeared in professional journals as well as the New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, The Nation, American Prospect, American Conservative, and other popular venues.
Reviews
A vital reconsideration of a contentious constitutional amendment. * Publishers Weekly *
Readers interested in the Second Amendment's origins or in assessing arguments about its meaning will likely and deeply appreciate this comprehensive history. * Library Journal *
At a time when the Supreme Court is increasingly looking at the original meaning in interpreting the Constitution, Professor Carl Bogus has written a riveting account of how the Second Amendment actually came to be added to the Constitution. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Professor Bogus shows that the Second Amendment was meant to protect the slave system and keep Congress from disarming slave patrols. This is an essential history for all lawyers, judges, students, and individuals who are researching the original understanding of the Second Amendment and gun rights. * Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law *
A surprisingly fast-paced account of the events leading up to the Second Amendment. Bogus persuasively suggests that, while Madison and other Founders paid lip-service to the dedication of militias and the threat of standing armies, their primary concern was to suppress insurrections by the people they enslaved. Madison's Militia undermines any claim by the Roberts Court/the Supreme Court to locate the individual right to bear arms in an originalist reading of the Constitution. * Jeannine DeLombard, author of In the Shadow of the Gallows: Race, Crime, and American Civic Identity *
Bogus offers a fresh and fearless investigation into why Madison and his contemporaries added the right to keep and bear arms to the Constitution. Uncluttered by myth or hagiography, this book will likely become the definitive account of the darker side of the Second Amendment's drafting and ratification. * Darrell A.H. Miller, Duke Law School *
Carl Bogus makes an important contribution to efforts to discern the meaning of the 27 words that make up the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Bogus' work provides a rich context to understand what those who drafted and debated the amendment faced, as well as what they hoped to accomplish. Bogus invites readers to reconsider the racially neutral right to bear arms that the amendment protects in light of the immediate racialized threat of uprisings and rebellions by enslaved people against their enslavers. His book offers a radically different way to read and understand the amendment which aligns with, rather than revises, the history surrounding its ratification. * Lisa A. Crooms-Robinson, Professor, Howard University School of Law *
Slavery was the main event-not a sideshow-as the U.S. was founded. In this insightful, crisply written book Carl Bogus tells us that what impelled the now infamous Second Amendment was precisely the rampant fear of slave insurrections, necessitating the formation of a well-armed militia. * Gerald Horne, author, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America *
Madison's Militia offers an illuminating overview of the tangled history of the Second Amendment and its 'right to bear arms.' Whatever the limitations of citizen militias in actually fighting wars, they were indispensable in Virginia and other states worried about suppressing any slave rebellions and about the possibility that the new national government would prove insufficiently protective of slavery. American historians are increasingly studying the intersections of slavery and a desire to maintain white supremacy, and Bogus provides a valuable, extremely well-written, demonstration of those intersections. * Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School and author of Framed: America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance *
Book Information
ISBN 9780197632222
Author Carl T. Bogus
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 123mm * 274mm * 30mm
