Andrew Delbanco, "The War Before The War"

Andrew Delbanco discusses his book, "The War Before The War", at Politics and Prose.

One of our premier public intellectuals, Delbanco, Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia, received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2012. In his new book, he examines the decades prior to the Civil War, when many northerners, not able to witness the conditions that slaves lived under in the South, chose to believe that slavery was a benign institution. Yet with slaves continually risking their lives to flee their masters, this notion was gradually revealed as a myth. Focusing on the 1850 Compromise, and especially its strengthening of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law, Delbanco traces the growing awareness of the gap between the nation’s ideals of equality and the realities of human bondage, shows how this moral evolution led to the Civil War, and outlines the larger history of the dilemma of knowing when to resist unjust laws.

Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics and Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics and Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online. Visit them on the web at

Produced by Tom Warren