"This book argues that James Madison and the First Congress wrote the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ensure that the South could continue to have armed militia as a bulwark against slave revolts. Although neither Madison nor his colleagues explained why they included a right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights, the Amendment itself explains that a state needed a well-regulated militia to provide for its “security, ” but what precisely worried the framers? The most reliable method of deducing why people acted as they did is to understand the imperatives they faced. During a debate over whether Virginia should ratify the Constitution and join the Union, Patrick Henry argued that the Constitution enabled Congress to subvert the slave system by disarming the militia—a terrifying prospect because the South lived in constant fear of slave insurrection. Later, Henry worked determinately to end Madison’s political career. When he wrote the Bill of Rights, Madison—who, according to a colleague, was “haunted by the ghost of Patrick Henry”—sought to allay the fears Henry had stoked by providing that the militia could be armed by their own members. Some historians believe the framers wanted to safeguard the militia to reduce the need for a standing army, which was considered a threat to liberty. This book shows, however, that the Revolutionary War conclusively demonstrated that the militia were incapable as a military force. The real concern was preserving armed militia for slave control."-- Publisher's website.