Edmund Morgan American Paradox Analysis

In my previous reflection, I mentioned how my problem with some previous presidents and the existence of Confederate statues was not only due to slavery alone, but rather the mindset of the people in power who allowed the suffering of innocent people while they were making money and creating their institutions. Chapter five explored this topic greatly and introduced me to what historian Edmund Morgan called the “American Paradox.” I’ve learned about the events leading up to the American Revolution and the ratifying of the Constitution at every level of my education, but the textbooks never made the connections this chapter did with the mentioning of this paradox. I remember thinking that it was ironic how the Founding Father’s felt like they were slaves to the British without acknowledging that they themselves created that circumstance to the actual …show more content…
This chapter also mentions how the Declaration of Independence—a document Thomas Jefferson helped write— expressed no sympathy for the real slaves even though they had a chance to.Reading about these subjects in school never sat well with me because we are supposed to see the Founding Father’s and the white soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War as heroes patriotically fighting for their freedom, while at the same time they were actively upholding the practice of slavery. This chapter also brought up the point that the words slave and slavery where excluded from the Constitution and that this showed how reluctant the Founding Fathers were to debate the morality of it or at least trying to control it. I understand that they wanted to keep the peace and have every state on board while they drafted the Constitution, but I feel like they could have tried harder to protect the slaves and make it so that their suffering was