Slavery In The Constitution

Improved Essays
The Constitution was a new and revolutionary document in America. It established the federal government as the supreme law of the land and extended universal rights towards its citizens in the document itself and later in the Bill of Rights that was amended to it later. However, the Constitution didn’t extend any rights to blacks. It doesn’t specifically acknowledge the concept of slavery, but it is still a proslavery document because it does nothing to end slavery and even has some acts in place that will extend the power slavery has. The Constitution mentions slavery in three different ways without using the words slave or slavery. In Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, also known as the three fifths compromise, it refers to slaves …show more content…
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote against having slavery in America. Madison, in The Federalist article 51, says that a civil society ends when a “stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker.” When the weaker are “not secured against the violence of the stronger,” then “anarchy may as truly be said to reign.” If the people want to continue to have their liberty, then the government must protect the weak. The slaves are a perfect example of the weak. They have no rights and are being oppressed by white people. Anarchy was reigning during the creation of the Constitution because the Southern states were threatening secession if the government restricts slavery. Jefferson agrees partially with Madison’s ideas. Jefferson wrote that slaves should work “with their parents to a certain age,” and then be freed to a “place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper.” Blacks would then be sent to a place outside of America to live out their lives in freedom. Jefferson believed that blacks deserved their freedom, but had a “suspicion only” that blacks are “inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” Jefferson felt it was wrong to force the slaves to keep working for someone else’s experience, but he also felt that slaves were unable to be a beneficial aspect in …show more content…
The writers of the American Mercury, a newspaper in America, also believed that slavery should end. The American people have stated that all men are created equal, but they still have slavery. The ideas in the Declaration of Independence of everyone being equal are being ignored when it comes to blacks and slavery is allowed to flourish. The systems that support the enslavement of some people, “will no more support the burden of humanity” than a “section of an arch will support a column.” The government system in America will fall if slavery will be allowed to continue. America is punishing innocent people with “endless, hopeless slavery.” They have done nothing to deserve this treatment, but America is forcing them to work their entire life for someone else and to endure countless painful experiences when they don’t perform their job as well their masters wish them to. George Tucker also comments on the fact that slaves should be freed. Some people believe that blacks are advancing in their knowledge at a “pace equal to our own,” but “they are likely to advance much faster.” They realize that they are equals to white people and deserve their rights, but they are being oppressed. They are smart enough to realize that when war occurs and someone offers them their freedom, then they will take it. The Constitution needs to be changed so blacks are free and have land of their own if

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Edmund Morgan, an American historian and a previous history professor at Yale University, unveils how slavery was able to exist in America while liberty was held at the highest of standards in his journal Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox. After sifting through the stories of our nations founding fathers and most important men of the American Revolution his discovers that, unlike most other historians, the fopaux we call slavery did not begin as a racist act. Morgan also discovered that while many write off the founding fathers and the original colonists as hypocrites for wanting to live in a free world while depriving others of their liberty that’s not an accurate name to describe them. And throughout Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox Edmund Morgan explains his realization with the world.…

    • 1176 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Thomas Jefferson’s Thoughts On Freedom And Equality Thomas Jefferson was one of the most influential and inspiring of the Founding Fathers. Jefferson is credited with being the author of the declaration of independence, the Third President of the United States, and for his major contributions in influencing religious freedom as well as equality and liberty rights. However there are many misconceptions on how universal Jefferson expected freedom and equality to be. Society today criticizes Jefferson due to his slave ownership and his failures instead of recognizing his much more significant accomplishments in freedom and equality.…

    • 1423 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, several men included one of the founding Fathers of the United States Thomas Jefferson had plans of colonization of African-Americans living in America. Sometime around 1777, as member of the Virginia legislature Jefferson proposed a plan to colonize the slaves throughout the slave states in America. His idea was a gradual emancipation of the slaves to a colony outside the not affect the citizens of America, but would give the United States government the ability to protect and establish a political infrastructure for the slaves until a time they were able to govern and protect themselves. This plan not only included slaves but free African-Americans as well, demonstrating that the United States was taking away freedoms from those that were free and forcing them to live in a place they had not chosen for themselves. The slaves were brought to America and those that were free had made the decision to come here of their own free will.…

    • 1625 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Constitution Dbq

    • 1305 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Although men like Fredrick Douglass in document 2 (“What to the slave is the fourth of the July?”) expressed that the constitution was a “glorious liberty document” which ensured the freedom of ALL men, the constitution has no explicit mentioning of slavery. No where in the constitution does it say, verbatim, that slavery is to be abolished. Despite the fact that they had the ability to do so, the framers of the constitution chose NOT to remove slavery from the document. Even if they hadn’t removed slavery, they failed to free their slaves (for the most part) and Thomas Jefferson has his reasoning. Jefferson declares, in a letter to John Hope, that “. . .…

    • 1305 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Apush Dbq Analysis

    • 1254 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In the late 18th century, the Constitution of the United States was ratified and the unification of the union along with it. Although the Constitution was created to produce order and unity, the nation was split into two by the mid-19th century. After a vast amount of territories being brought into the union due to the nation 's’ Manifest Destiny, the issue of slavery became the center of politics. The cause of such political and social chaos was the fact that the Constitution had not specifically addressed the issue of slavery and what was to be done about it. It’s consequences were that the nation had felt it’s repercussions years later.…

    • 1254 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Obviously, since the 19th century, when slavery was officially outlawed, in America, slavery has been looked down on and as a dark time in this nation 's history. For this reason, the compromise of representation and slavery can be applauded and as a result of the genius writing of the…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis Essay In Benjamin Banneker’s 1791 letter to Thomas Jefferson he argues against slavery in the United States. The letter was written soon after the Founding of the United States as a country and at a time when slavery would have been a common practice throughout the nation. Mr. Banneker was an accomplished black man who was the son of a former slave. President Jefferson, at the time, was the secretary of state and would have been a known advocate of freedom (through his co-framing of the Declaration of Independence); despite his ownership of slaves.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson condemned England for forcing slavery upon America, and then using the slaves to combat the American Revolution. He believed that slaves were justifiable enemies and that the presence of slavery would destroy the Republic. Although Jefferson believed that no man had the right to enslave another, he did not believe that Blacks were equal to whites. Slavery did in fact become a polarizing policy, and the division between Americans led to the cession of southern states and a Civil War. The problems leading to and the resolutions of the war proved to be just as complicated as Thomas Jefferson’s views on race and slavery.…

    • 1232 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Framers 3/5 Compromise

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Since the Framers began writing the Constitution in 1787 to govern our great nation, Americans had been avoiding an ugly truth. Slavery had been in American since the colonization of Jamestown in 1619 because indentured servants had become too expensive to bring over from England to do their work. The colonists’ only option for survival was to bring slaves over to help with the hard labor no one else wanted to do or could do. When the slaves came, they gave the colonists a chance at living. They helped with the tobacco crop and rice.…

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Civil War Dbq

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Many leaders could not decide whether or not to make slave men and women free. Which was a conflict because of the Declaration of independence, it stated that “all man are created equal”. This was a conflict, especially for Thomas Jefferson since he wrote part of the Declaration of independence. Despite the Declaration of Independence, we have the U.S. Constitution does have something to say about slavery. In the year 1865, we can see that it state “Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, nor any place subject to their jurisdiction”.…

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Civil War Dbq

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Although the actual term slave was never used in the Constitution, the forefathers made it clear that a person held to service or labor could never be discharged from service unless his master released him. This reveals that the majority of slaveholders in the South viewed their slaves to be pieces of property like a horse or a piece of land. The final provision of the Constitution that signaled that the issue of slavery could be a precursor to secession and the American Civil War was that the authors of the Constitution agreed that the American slave trade should be abolished by 1808 (Wilentz). Overall, the provisions about slavery in the original Constitution demonstrated not only a discord between Northern and Southern legislators, but it illustrated how economically valuable slaves were as property to their Southern…

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During this era, most whites owned slaves in fact on some plantations, slaves outnumbered the white owners. Before discussing the relationship between the American Revolution and black freedom, we must internalize the conditions slaves live in and why would slaves fight for freedom with possibly the ultimate sacrifice death. According to the authors of the Declaration of Independence, living under the British rule was like being a slave. However, these rights did not include enslaved Africans.…

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Thomas Jefferson was a Founding Father of this nation and drafted the historical Deceleration of Independence, as well as a strong supporter of the Constitution. However, overtime he slowly doubts the morals and sustainment of the Union, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 is what truly set Thomas Jefferson on a path of doubt for the future of the Union. Slavery, a rising issue that is the thorn in the side of all political policies. Is it a necessary evil or a concept that must be eradicated from society?…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” (Thomas Jefferson) Some of the founding fathers were slave owners when Jefferson wrote the constitution. The founding fathers were wrong when they wrote “All Men Are Created Equal” because no one was treated equally. In the United States of America in 1776 everyone was not treated equally.…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While the slave culture was cherished there was a counter culture of abolitionists and their main goal was to out law slavery and free the slaves in the southern colonies. Some of the founding fathers and most important Americans were staunch abolitionists (“Real Founding Fathers Who Were Abolitionists”). The abolitionists included “John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, Sr., Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Benjamin Rush, and Benjamin Franklin later on in life (Tucker, “Real Founding Fathers Who Were Abolitionists”). Even though many founding fathers had slaves there were plenty who were against slavery. The ones who were against it helped keep the abolitionist movement going in the 1800’s, after the Civil War (Stanton “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery,”…

    • 1265 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays