Constitution 101: Slavery and the Roots of the Secession Crisis
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss whether or not the American Founding supported slavery before introducing Kevin Portteus.
The United States Constitution was designed to secure the natural rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. Signed by Constitutional Convention delegates on September 17, 1787—Constitution Day—it was ratified by the American people and remains the most enduring and successful constitution in history.
In this twelve-lecture course, students will examine the political theory of the American Founding and subsequent challenges to that theory throughout American history. Topics covered in this course include: the natural rights theory of the Founding, the meaning of the Declaration and the Constitution, the crisis of the Civil War, the Progressive rejection of the Founding, and the nature and form of modern liberalism.
Contrary to the Founders’ guiding principle of equality and their hopes for eventual abolition, slavery not only survived but spread and became entrenched in the South. Subsequently, a new ideology arose in defense of slavery, which rejected the principles of the Founding and fueled the sectional crisis that led to the Civil War.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan. |
| 0:13.0 | And I'm Juan Dabalos. We're back with Constitution 101, the meaning and history of the Constitution. |
| 0:17.8 | We're on to lecture number six today, slavery and the roots of the secession |
| 0:21.5 | crisis. Why is this a powerful lecture? Well, it's interesting that you ask that. I share this |
| 0:26.9 | lecture, this one in the next lecture, with people who argue against the founders and their views |
| 0:33.4 | on slavery, saying that the founders were actually in favor of slavery. You've probably |
| 0:37.8 | heard about the 1619 project that says that actually the country was founded on slavery and |
| 0:43.7 | that the founders actually did nothing to try to combat slavery and the, you know, they were slave |
| 0:49.1 | owners and they favored the institution and they did nothing to end it. When you listen to this lecture and the next one, |
| 0:56.4 | it's one of the most powerful arguments to combat that narrative. And of course, that narrative is |
| 1:01.9 | designed to discredit the founding and the Constitution wholesale. If there's one thing wrong with it, |
| 1:07.3 | the whole thing needs to be discarded. And it turns out, yes, that human beings made |
| 1:11.6 | this. So there are imperfections and problems, which the founders acknowledged, but the narrative |
| 1:17.1 | that the country and the constitution were made only for white men and that all men doesn't mean, |
| 1:23.1 | all men, it means white men. These things are patently untrue. As we discussed in the last introduction, |
| 1:28.5 | you don't have to take our word for it. You certainly shouldn't take the 1619 project's word for it. |
| 1:32.7 | You should read the words and the laws that the men at the time wrote and passed. This lie is |
| 1:38.3 | rooted in this notion that history is always progressing and that past, bad, modern good, and this very linear |
| 1:48.0 | view of history that it's always getting better and better and better, and therefore, the past |
| 1:53.3 | must have been worse and worse and worse. Pick any good history book, and you'll learn that |
| 1:58.7 | that's not the case. History goes up and down, |
| 2:01.5 | and things get better, and things get worse, and things change, and things go back to being better, |
... |
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