The takeover of America’s culture by the “woke” left features the idea that our country was founded on slavery. Allegedly, all of our present-day racial woes came out of slavery, and even the remarkable strengths that made America exceptional up until the election of 2020, were borne on the backs of slaves and manipulated by evil white men. In publishing the “1619 Project”, the NY Times smears The Founding Fathers, making much of the fact that some of them were slave owners at the time of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. They were thus slave-owning hypocrites.
Broad generalizations such as this intentionally ignore or downplay facts that run counter to that point of view. An engaging article by Mark David Hall in 2021 (cited below) gives a much fairer evaluation of the participants in the convention and shows that great thought was given to dealing with the question of slavery. “American chattel slavery was an evil institution, and it is not unreasonable to criticize founders who participated in it.
But many Founding Fathers never owned slaves, some of those who did freed them, and they passed numerous laws to put the institution on the road to extinction.” Twenty-five of the fifty-five delegates owned slaves, but among these owners there was strong sentiment toward ending slavery and banning further importation of slaves. At that time only three states still permitted importation, NC, SC, and GA. There was hope that those states would voluntarily abolish slavery without a formal written ban.
In addition to southern state considerations, the group struggled over guidelines for new states coming into the union (OH, MI, IN, WI, IL.) The resulting Northwest Ordinance provided that religious liberty would be protected and slavery not allowed. It was thought that as more and more states entered the union, slavery would be diluted.
Handling the slavery issue was a balancing act. If the Constitution being drawn up were too strongly abolitionist, the southern states would never ratify it, and slavery would continue. Far from being insensitive hypocrites intent on continuing slavery, the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to work out details that would keep slavery from spreading and would abolish the idea that there could be property in men.
At the same time, the documents were able to have the approval of southern states necessary for ratification. The thoughtful deliberating to accomplish this was remarkable, and providential. Any sentiment suggesting that 1776 does not indicate the true founding of our nation is outrageous and inaccurate.
You will likely gain a deep appreciation of our Founding Fathers and the creation of the Constitution by reading Hall's article.
Mark David Hall, Slavery and the American Founding, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, Vol. 45, No. 3, March 2021.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/view/slavery-and-the-american-founding/
