Date:   10/20/2008 2:40:16 AM ( 17 y ago)
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URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=1280916

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"It is not really fair to judge the founding of America based on our concept of liberty and equal rights today, BNG. Instead, you have to you consider the times when our government was founded. The practice of slavery was hardly a universally condemned act at the time."

As with most things, the reality was a bit more complicated:

Slavery In The U. S. Constitution
by Claire Berkowitz and Karen Board Moran

Abolitionists said the United States Constitution was a slave document created by slave owners. After 50 years of secrecy the deals made behind closed doors were exposed by James Madison’s newly published Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787. Many of the founding fathers who owned slaves had varying opinions about whether slavery should be abolished. In order to stabilize the nation politically and economically, the first two compromises with human life occurred:

- The 3/5’s Compromise enabled more masters to become lawmakers, even though the 3/5’s of the slave population counted, had no vote or voice in the democracy.

- The Slave Trade Compromise stopped slave imports after 1807 encouraging slave breeding within the United States and slave auctions throughout the south.

Most founding fathers believed slavery would eventually die out. However, they had not foreseen the impact of cotton gin technology which enabled cotton to become the king cash crop of the South. Before the device was created, one slave could pick and clean seeds from a hundred pound sack of field cotton in 100 days. After 1793 a slave could pick 100 pounds a day and pass the sack to another slave hand turning the crank of the new engine to clean quickly the 100 pounds in one day - even faster if the gin was turned by mule or waterpower. The gin constantly needed to be “fed” cotton from the slave field labor planting, weeding, and picking the crop. To increase their profits from sales to British and Northern textile manufacturers, plantation owners needed more slaves and land in order to produce more cotton.

The Industrial Revolution had changed every aspect of American life and the country’s borders spread westward with the addition of the Mexican Cession—opening new cotton fields. To maintain the original Constitutional balance of lawmaking power, Congress continued to play the compromise game in 1820 and 1850 to maintain an equal number of free and slave votes in the Senate (where every state had two votes). The great fear? A majority of free states might amend the Constitution to abolish slavery within the nation at great economic loss to the slave owners and textile manufacturers.

Even before the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the Confederation Congress had been forced to deal with the issue of slavery in the Northwest Territory, northwest of the Ohio River. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 forbade slavery in the territories and states that would be created (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin). As a concession to the South, the ordinance included a Fugitive Slave Law to ensure runaway slaves would be returned to their owners if caught in the northwest.

http://www.wwhp.org/Resources/Slavery/constitution.html


The American Revolution and Slavery

Leaders of the patriot cause repeatedly argued that British policies would make the colonists slaves of the British. The colonists' emphasis on the danger of mass enslavement derived in part from the highly visible example of racial slavery.

Both the British and the colonists believed that slaves could serve an important role during the Revolution. In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, promised freedom to all slaves belonging to rebels who would join "His Majesty's Troops." Some 800 slaves joined British forces.

Meanwhile an American diplomat, Silas Deane, hatched a secret plan to incite slave insurrections in Jamaica. Two South Carolinians, John Laurens and his father Henry, persuaded Congress to unanimously approve a plan to recruit an army of 3,000 slave troops to stop a British invasion of South Carolina and Georgia. The federal government would compensate the slaves' owners and each black would, at the end of the war, be emancipated and receive $50. The South Carolina legislature rejected the plan, scuttling the proposal.

As a result of the Revolution, a surprising number of slaves were manumitted, while thousands of others freed themselves by running away. Georgia lost about a third of its slaves and South Carolina lost 25,000. Yet despite these losses, slavery quickly recovered in the South. By 1810, South Carolina and Georgia had three times as many slaves as in 1770.

The Revolution had contradictory consequences for slavery. In the South, slavery became more entrenched. In the North, every state freed slaves as a result of court decisions or the enactment of gradual emancipation schemes. Yet even in the North, there was strong resistance to emancipation and freeing of slaves was accompanied by the emergence of a virulent form of racial prejudice.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=72


 

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