Are You Sure That There's a Contradiction Between Enslavement and Republicanism?

Slavery and republicanism are two sides of the same coin, says author. People who were most alive to possibilities of freedom as a social value deny it to others. The ancient republics on whom framers imagined they were basing their models,. were slave republics. James madison, a slaveholder, wrote to his father, another slaveholder, explaining that it would be wrong to sell billy to another slaveholder.