Using the debate over American slavery as a case study, Jordan T. Watkins analyzes the development of historical consciousness in antebellum America, showing how Americans' appeal to the nations' sacred and religious texts - the Bible and the Constitution - gave rise to a growing sense of historical distance.

Jordan T. Watkins is an assistant professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. Previously, he was a coeditor at The Joseph Smith Papers Project.

Acknowledgements; Prologue; Introduction; 1. 'Recourse must be had to the history of those times'; 2. 'The ground will shake'; 3. 'Texts ... designed for local and temporary use'; 4. 'The further we recede from the birth of the constitution'; 5. 'The culture of cotton has healed its deadly wound'; 6. 'Times now are not as they were'; 7. 'We have to do not ... with the past, but the living present'; 8. A 'Modern crispus attucks'; Conclusion; Epilogue; Index.