The founders understood that slavery was
wrong on principle that it's by
definition an injustice
and they
understood it as
such
hamilton and madison both referred
to slaves as men
this is a critical
insight because
if slaves are men if
slaves are human beings then that means
that they have inalienable natural
rights
and that means that slavery can
only rest on the basis of positive law
that
it's by definition an injustice
they understood it as such
thomas jefferson in one of the most
famous statements on slavery to come out
of the american founding query 18 in
notes on the state of virginia explains
that slavery is at war with human nature
and with justice he says it's bad for
slaves because it teaches them to hate
their country and it teaches them to
lack self-assertion but it's also bad
for masters it teaches masters to become
tyrants it warps them it teaches them to
have contempt for the rights of other
human beings and once they learn to have
contempt for the rights of their slaves
they then transfer that and learn to
have contempt for the rights of others
who are not slaves
finally it's bad for society it's bad
for the country as a whole
jefferson
says that we are so wrong on the
question of slavery that it is certain
that god will punish us if we don't get
it right in fact he says if it ever came
down to a contest between slaves and
masters over the future of the country
jefferson says quote
the almighty has no attribute which can
take side with us in such a contest
unquote so in short
we can see pretty quickly that the
founding fathers understood that they
had a colossal problem on their hands
that
slavery was a massive injustice and
they understood it as such
what did the founders do about slavery
because again
to say that they did not end slavery
altogether is not the same as saying
that they did nothing about it
for
instance
during the founding and early american
period
nine states became free states
all of the states the original states
north of maryland so from pennsylvania
northward became free states abolished
slavery in one way or another
eased their manumission laws
and a
manumission is simply an individual act
of emancipation where
an individual
owner frees an individual slave so it
was made easier to free one slaves in
the southern states that retained
slavery and as a result
thousands of slaves were manumitted now
this does not end the institution of
slavery altogether but it is certainly
important to you if you are one of those
thousands who was manumitted during this
period
we also see instances of southern courts
favoring the claims of slaves who were
suing for their freedom in fact
this is
how the
dred scott case got its start in
the missouri state courts
in ruling against dred scott in 1850 the
missouri supreme court admitted that if
dred scott's case had come before the
court say 10 years earlier they most
certainly would have would have freed
him but times had changed and so they
were no longer honoring the the friendly
agreement that they had with free states
to respect the laws of those states
because of the intensification of the
slavery controversy there were also
reforms in the slave states that
tended
to recognize the humanity of slaves by
the beginning of the 19th century north
carolina had reformed its laws so that
killing a slave carried the same penalty
as killing a free person it was still
hard to obtain a conviction but at least
this is a recognition that a slave is in
fact a human being and not an article of
livestock
there was the
abolition of the slave
trade which was legally abolished in
1807 and the abolition took effect in
1808 later on the slave trade was
declared to be piracy making it a death
penalty offense
this was a law which was extremely hard
to enforce in the age of sale but at
least you have a declaration of a
commitment to end this inhumane practice
if one looks to the constitution itself
one notices that conspicuously absent
from the entire constitution including
the provisions that deal directly with
slavery is the word slave in any
variation
madison frederick douglass abraham
lincoln all came to the same conclusion
about why this was the case
they did not want to taint the document
with any implication that slavery
existed so that if someone came along in
the future without any particular
knowledge of our history or politics
they could not read the original
constitution and know that slavery had
been a part of it
if one turns to the particular
provisions in the constitution that deal
with slavery we also can see ambiguities
and compromises
that that reflect the founders desire to
see slavery
gradually removed from our society
the
importation clause in article 1
section 9 was looked upon by many people
as a death sentence for slavery
it was
widely believed at the time that slave
populations could not be self-sustaining
that only continual importation
would allow slavery to survive in a
particular community and so many people
such as james wilson believed that
cutting off the slave trade killed
slavery itself and that proved to be
largely true in many places except in
america in america the slave population
contrary to expectations prove to be
self-supporting
finally if one is
looking at what the founders did about
slavery perhaps the most important thing
that they did about slavery was to pass
a piece of legislation called the
northwest ordinance so the northwest
territory
was uh the full area in which the
federal government could control slavery
and the northwest ordinance banned it in
perpetuity and it was passed by a large
margin in congress both times under both
forms of government this was significant
in a number of ways
indiana when it petitioned for statehood
asked for the right to be exempt from
the northwest ordinance now one does not
ask for that exception if one wants to
be a free state and the federal
government told them that they were not
exempted they could remain free under
the northwest ordinance or they could
become a free state so
it certainly made one state that might
have been a slave state into a free
state it provided when we got to the
civil war
an enormous amount of manpower and
material resources for the union war
effort and finally
the language of the slavery prohibition
in the northwest ordinance became the
basis for the 13th amendment to the
constitution outlawing slavery
nationwide by constitutional amendment
so many things were done to restrict
slavery to hem it in as lincoln would
later say within the narrowest limits of
necessity
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