How does slavery help illuminate the development of political parties?
LEPORE: I tried to make that argument, but I’m not sure it worked. The day that New York Burning was published, Hurricane Katrina touched down in New Orleans. I had a new baby, and I was home with him, and found myself glued to the television. Talking heads would come onnews anchors, commentators—and say, while looking at the footage of nobody but black people on the roofs of those houses, as if shocked, as if this had never occurred to them, ‘Oh, my God. Race still exists in this country. There still is racism. Oh, my God. New Orleans is segregated!’ I’m trying to convince people that it matters that black men were burned at the stake in New York City in 1741, and people are surprised that black people are marooned on the roofs of New Orleans in 2005? Here I am, trying to make an argument about eighteenth-century politics, attempting to illustrate, with all manner of exhaustive archival researchcharts about the census and the tax lists—and close readings of Blackstone’s Commentaries a
