To recite the title of George William Van Cleve’s book, A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic, is to beg the fundamental question regarding the American founding: did the framers of the constitution of 1787 establish a nation that would pursue the economic interests of whites at the expense of enslaving blacks, or did they create a regime of self-government based on a principle of human equality irrespective of race? Everyone knows that the Constitution contains compromises regarding slavery, most famously one that counts 3/5ths of the total number of slaves (but not free…