The Creation of a Crusader: Senator Thomas Morris and the Birth of the Antislavery Movement

Senator Thomas Morris was the first member of the US Senate to defend abolitionist positions and argued that the Constitution neither identified people as property nor granted Congress the power to establish slavery. His ideas were quickly adopted by the nascent antislavery movement and became the cornerstone of antislavery political beliefs, shaping the core principles of both the Free-Soil and Republican Parties platforms.

Format: Unspecified
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 30 November 2023
Publisher: Kent State University Press

More than 175 years after his passing, Senator Thomas Morris has remained one of the few early national champions of political and constitutional antislavery without a dedicated biography. In this groundbreaking first-exhaustive study of Morris's life and contributions, David C. Crago compellingly argues that historians have mistakenly marginalized Morris's role in the early antislavery movement.

Morris was the first member of the US Senate to defend abolitionist positions within that body. Confronted with Southern demands for Congressional action to silence abolitionists and endorse slavery, he asserted that a proslavery interpretation of the Constitution was a distortion of the text. Instead, he argued, the Constitution neither identified people as property nor granted Congress the power to establish slavery in the territories or the District of Columbia. Although far outside the 1830s political consensus, Morris's ideas were quickly adopted by the nascent antislavery movement and became the cornerstone of antislavery political beliefs.

Ultimately expelled from the Ohio Democratic Party and denied reelection to the Senate, within a decade, his ideas would shape the core principles of both the Free-Soil and Republican Parties' platforms.

The Creation of a Crusader fills an important gap in understanding the early American antislavery movement and sheds light on Morris's overlooked yet significant influence.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781606354636