The Introduction opens with a description of the economic importance of slavery in both the North and the South. While slavery had been abolished in the North, many Northerners still indirectly relied heavily on labor from enslaved individuals. The Founding Fathers did not explicitly condone or condemn slavery though some of them secretly hoped that the institution would eventually die out. The Constitution did not mention slavery by name but still protected the institution through clauses that supported the return of fugitive enslaved individuals, the importation of enslaved individuals, and the Three-Fifths Compromise, which only counted three out of five enslaved Black people when determining a state’s population for the purpose of legal representation. These protections enhanced Southern power in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. It was a widely accepted belief that the Constitution situated slavery beyond the reach of the national government, leaving its regulation to the states. Most debates over slavery ended in a stalemate.

The Introduction categorizes rights into four groups: natural, civil, political, and social. While most Republicans in the 1860s believed Black Americans deserved natural and civil rights, few embraced granting them political or social rights. Reconstruction, however, marked a turning point in this thinking.