Before the Constitutional Convention, there was no great movement in America to abolish slavery. Prior to the Convention in 1787, many of the “Founding Fathers” expressed opinions that condemned slavery. For example, John Jay, great supporter of the Constitution after its creation and the author of wrote in 1786 In fact, the American Constitution and its Bill of Rights contain the rights of a free people, but they do not guarantee freedom explicitly. The Thirteenth Amendment does, albeit with the glaring exception of and, by implication, it also established freedom as a fundamental American right. Freedom has had many meanings for Americans, but in its core, the definition has always been set against
