If they were so against slavery, why didn't they just abolish it when they founded the country?
Frederick Douglass on Slavery & the US Cons ution
The cons ution is interposed. It always is.
“Let me tell you something. Do you know that you have been deceived and cheated? You have been told that this government was intended from the beginning for white men, and for white men exclusively; that the men who formed the Union and framed the Cons ution designed the permanent exclusion of the colored people from the benefits of those ins utions. Davis, Taney and Yancey, traitors at the south, have propagated this statement, while their copperhead echoes at the north have repeated the same. There never was a bolder or more wicked perversion of the truth of history. So far from this purpose was the mind and heart of your fathers, that they desired and expected the abolition of slavery. They framed the Cons ution plainly with a view to the speedy downfall of slavery. They carefully excluded from the Cons ution any and every word which could lead to the belief that they meant it for persons of only one complexion.
The Cons ution, in its language and in its spirit, welcomes the black man to all the rights which it was intended to guarantee to any class of the American people. Its preamble tells us for whom and for what it was made.”
Frederick Douglass (June 1863)
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/l...p?do ent=777
Modern liberals and neocons use slavery to bash the Cons ution and the Founding Fathers.
Let Frederick Douglass retort them in his own words. Douglass has great authority on the subject. He was a brilliant man, born a slave in 1818, but taught himself to read when he was 6 years old (without the benefit of the public schools). He was a man who valued liberty, and escaped from slavery when he was 20, in 1838.
Then he worked for the liberty of others, and at the same time, educated himself. He read the Founding do ents of our nation, and commentaries on them, like the Federalist Papers. After 1840, he was able to get his hands on Madison's Notes on the Federal Cons ution. Hence his great statement of liberty, above, from 1863.
Douglass was there.
If they were so against slavery, why didn't they just abolish it when they founded the country?
There were too many racists and Klansmen among the populace, for that idea to go over too good.
Frederick Douglass thinks you're a copperhead.
Last edited by Galileo; 10-01-2009 at 02:59 PM.
Not sure if you read the post. Douglass was not trying to "fit in". In fact, he broke with the famous white abolishionist Garrison on this above issue.
Douglass went back and studied his history, while all Garrison did was thump the Bible.
The Founding Fathers did indeed want all races to be equal in one nation, as Douglass observed. It says so right in the preamble.
The problem was that the rank and file people on the street didn't agree. Most of the common people were racists in those days, while only a couple minor Founding Fathers were racists.
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Cons ution for the United States of America."
So why didn't they just establish the US as a slave free nation in the first place?
This.The question is not whether the colored man is mentally equal to his white brother, for in this respect there is no equality among white men themselves.
The question is not whether colored men will be likely to reach the Presidential chair. I have no trouble here: for a man may live quite a tolerable life without ever breathing the air of Washington.
But the question is: Can the white and colored people of this country be blended into a common nationality, and enjoy together, in the same country, under the same flag, the inestimable blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as neighborly citizens of a common country?
I didn't know poor white trash went back that far.
Are you a moron? All the states had slavery before the Founding Fathers came upon the scene.
But the claim is they were all against slavery, so they could have abolished it when they wrote the Cons ution.
Why didn't they?
Well, for one thing the Cons ution had to be ratified by the People. If the Cons ution had banned slavery, then Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and New York would not have ratified it. They put in a provision that allowed for the banning of the slave trade.
They also put incentives to abolish slavery, like the 3/5th rule. The 3/5th rule gave an incentive to free slaves, as each freed slaves increased the state's representation in the House, the Electoral College, and gave them more clout on appointing Supreme Court Justices.
The 3/5th rule also acknowledged that slavery was bad for the economy, as it was taken from the Articles of Confederation, where it was assumed that a slave had only 60% of the economic input of a free person.
I should know better than to argue with a copperhead.
All they did was set an expiration date on legally importing slaves to the US, I think.
So every founding father was against slavery.
Even the ones who owned slaves....
They did, and then President Jefferson got rid of it in 1808.
Without the Cons ution, states could still be legally importing slaves today.
I know of only three who supported slavery; John Rutledge, Charles Pinckney and General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, all of South Carolina.
James Madison even tried to get a clause put in the Cons ution, it was in the Virginia Plan, that would allow the federal government to nullify state laws. That clause would have been used against slavery.
Madison also tried to get this same clause put into the Bill-of-Rights a couple years later.
So which ones owned slaves?
What's a founding father? Do you mean the Cons utional Convention delegates? Early US officers, revolutionary heroes, Ben Franklin, what?
How big is the club?
At the time of the Con utional convention, or at any time in their lives?
At the time of the convention or after.
Psychic in the counterfactual universe...
Didn't work either time, did it?Madison also tried to get this same clause put into the Bill-of-Rights a couple years later.
For purposes of Chumper's query, the people who signed the Cons ution.
In general, Founding Fathers would include those who attended the Cons utional convention, but didn't sign, or those who signed the Declaration of Independence, plus several other important heroes of the early Republic.
Why not at the time of the Convention or before?
Jesus, you checked them all Galileo? SC was the only pro-slavery haven at that point?
Hmm...
Slavery was legal at the time. You are supposed to follow the existing law until it is changed. Sort of like you should not smoke pot until it legal. Just because you don't smoke pot, doesn't mean you support the Drug War.
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