John Adams View Of Slavery

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Since before the formation of the United States, the issue of slavery has plagued the nation. Slavery, the practice of buying and selling of men and women as property, was ingrained in the very fabric of America’s origins. Article IV section 2 of the Constitution protected the rights of slave owners by prohibited one state from freeing slaves who fled to them from another state. There were nearly half a million slaves in the United States upon its founding on 4 July 1776. The importation of slaves from Africa continued until 1803. Most of these slaves were located in the southernmost states of of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia where they made up over forty percent of the population. While many of America’s founding fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were owners of slaves, others pushed back against the practice. John Adams and son his John Quincy were some of the earliest proponents of the anti-slavery movement in the United States. …show more content…
Whilst Adams believed that the institution of slavery would resolve itself given time, it can be argued that John Quincy feared that the practice, which undermined the very ideals that the country was found upon, would tear the union apart. The article will also serve to compare and contrast father and son, and show how the politics of slavery had changed over the course of a

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