Founding Sins: How a Group of Antislavery Radicals Fought to Put Christ into the Constitution

by Joseph S. Moore

Covenanters rejected slavery and racism in the very era both emerged as common sense to most Americans.

Their antislavery views predated even those of the Quakers. Unlike the Quakers, these were Christian militants, protecting their Underground Railroad stations with both prayer and gunfire.

To the Covenanter mind, the one must necessarily flow from the other. American racism sprang out of its lack of Christian law.

What is missing in historical narratives is any sense that these actors were part of a distinct voice that contemporaries heard, understood, and rejected.

in the long term, the English took implementing the Solemn League as lightly as the Scots took it seriously.18