The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

by Edward E. Baptist

The principle that a contract is inviolable and that property is absolute was now the accepted conclusion of the federal constitution. In the Fletcher decision, the chief justice never mentioned slavery. But the Court’s decision made possible the survey and sale of more than 20 million acres for slavery’s expanding footprint. Marshall’s ruling also gave every future defender of slavery and its expansion an incredible tool. Consider this: If the people of Georgia couldn’t overturn a contract born from obvious corruption, how could a legislature or any other government entity take slaves away from owners? Enslaved African Americans were property acquired by contract, according to the law of slave states. Nor, the decision implied, could legislatures constrain enslavers’ right to treat said property as being as absolute, as mobile, and as alienable as they liked.