This essay responds to incessant efforts to link the Constitution with slavery.
Why a Key 'Progressive' Claim Is Deceptive
"Progressives" base some of their case on that fact that perhaps 25 of the Constitution's 55 Framers (drafters) were slaveholders.
But this statistic is deceptive. The constitutional convention also included influential opponents of slavery. John Dickinson had inherited bondsmen, but freed them all. Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris, among others, were abolitionists. Even among the minority who held slaves, some, such as James Madison, favored gradual emancipation. There was much criticism of slavery at the constitutional convention, and only the South Carolina delegates offered even a tepid defense.
Another reason the statistic is deceptive is that the Framers composed only a tiny slice among the 2,000-or-so Founders. The Founders also included leading participants in the constitutional debates, such as Noah Webster of Connecticut and Tench Coxe of Pennsylvania, as well as the elected delegates to the state conventions that ratified the Constitution. Relatively few of these people owned slaves.
Slavery Seemed Headed for Extinction
Why then, didn't the Constitution abolish or curb slavery?
One reason is that issues of "property" were seen as matters of state, rather than federal, law. A more important reason was that slavery seemed to be on the path to early extinction.
The English-speaking peoples were the first major demographic group in history to abolish slavery — a fact the "woke" crowd always overlooks. This process was well underway when the Constitution was written. In 1772, the English Court of King's Bench had decided Somerset v. Stewart, which banished slavery from the English homeland. Soon after American Independence, 10 of the 13 states abolished the slave trade and one (North Carolina) imposed steep taxes upon it. Several states also began general emancipation. Five granted the vote to free African Americans.
That's why constitutional convention delegate Roger Sherman of Connecticut remarked that "the abolition of slavery seem[s] to be going on in the U.S. & that the good sense of the several States would probably by degrees compleat it." His Connecticut colleague, Oliver Ellsworth — later Chief Justice of the United States — predicted that "Slavery in time will not be a speck in our Country." Tragically, they did not foresee the invention of the cotton gin.
Compromise Was Necessary for Unity
Still, it was clear that the elite in a few states were clinging to slavery and would not approve a Constitution that curbed it. South Carolina delegate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney said, "[I]f himself & all his colleagues were to sign the Constitution & use their personal influence, it would be of no avail towards obtaining the assent of their Constituents. S. Carolina & Georgia cannot do without slaves."
The Framers were forced to conclude that a constitution curbing slavery could not unify the country and might even fail the nine-state ratification threshold.
Only Unity Would Prevent War
Why was unity so important? Because the probable result of disunion would be never-ending war on the American continent.
The common cause against Great Britain tied together colonies that never had much to do with each other — but by 1787, this connection was unraveling. The Confederation Congress was widely ignored. Rhode Island and Connecticut were in a creditor-debtor spat that threatened resort to arms. Many spoke of dividing the country into several confederations, with some states remaining entirely independent.
On the costs of disunity, European history was instructive. The previous 150 years had witnessed about 70 European wars (in addition to rebellions), and the results were horrific. The Thirty Years' War, which ended in 1648, may have killed, directly or indirectly, as many as 8 million people. The War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) resulted in perhaps half a million casualties; the Seven Years' War (1756-63) caused perhaps a million.
That was why Gov. Edmund Randolph introduced his Virginia Plan by emphasizing that the current system could not protect against foreign invasion, could not prevent states from provoking foreign powers, and could not prevent interstate conflict. To do that, a stronger government was necessary.
The Constitutional Debates Emphasized Unity
During the public debates on the Constitution, an important part of the advocates' successful argument was the need for unity to avoid war. Although I believe modern writers rely too heavily on "The Federalist Papers" when searching for constitutional meaning, those essays do offer a good sample of the arguments for unity.
John Jay, who had served as the Confederation's foreign secretary, wrote in Federalist No. 4:
"But the safety of the people of America against dangers from foreign force depends not only on their forbearing to give just causes of war to other nations, but also on their placing and continuing themselves in such a situation as not to invite hostility or insult; for it need not be observed that there are pretended as well as just causes of war . . .But ...
"One government can collect and avail itself of the talents and experience of the ablest men, in whatever part of the Union they may be found. It can move on uniform principles of policy. ... In the formation of treaties, it will regard the interest of the whole. ... It can apply the resources and power of the whole to the defense of any particular part, and that more easily and expeditiously than State governments or separate confederacies can possibly do, for want of concert and unity of system. It can place the militia under one plan of discipline, and, by putting their officers in a proper line of subordination to the Chief Magistrate, will, as it were, consolidate them into one corps, and thereby render them more efficient than if divided into thirteen or into three or four distinct independent companies." (Emphasis in original.)
"Leave America divided into thirteen or, if you please, into three or four independent governments — what armies could they raise and pay — what fleets could they ever hope to have? If one was attacked, would the others fly to its succor, and spend their blood and money in its defense?"In Federalist No. 5, Jay outlined the danger of warfare among the American states themselves, and in Federalist No. 6, Alexander Hamilton carried the argument further:
"If these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. ... To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages."In Federalist No. 41, Madison pointed out that European nations would intervene to turn American states against each other:
"The fortunes of disunited America will be even more disastrous than those of Europe. The sources of evil in the latter are confined to her own limits. No superior powers of another quarter of the globe intrigue among her rival nations, inflame their mutual animosities, and render them the instruments of foreign ambition, jealousy, and revenge."Madison summarized in Federalist No. 45: "[T]he union ... [is] essential to the security of the people of America against foreign danger [and] essential to their security against contentions among the different states."
So before criticizing the Founders for permitting the states to allow slavery, we must understand the choice they faced: (1) tolerating a vile institution that was (then) dying anyway or (2) consigning the American continent to perpetual warfare at a cost of millions of lives and incalculable misery.
Parting Shots
The "progressive" crowd attacks the Constitution in part because some slaveholders advocated it. But slaveholders were at least as prominent among the Constitution's active opponents. By the "woke" crowd's own reasoning, their criticism is tarred by antifederalist slaveholders such as Virginia's Richard Henry Lee and North Carolina's Willie Jones.
Finally: The claim that the Founders should have abolished slavery at all costs — no matter how horrible the results — ill becomes those who accept, or even promote, evils such as street violence, government attacks on freedom, and infanticide. Such people should re-assess their own conduct before railing against the Founders.
Reader Comments
Anyway bunch of rotten idealists. I like most of them. Hopefully they weren't too Bacchic.
It all boils down to the rapist claiming that it wasn't rape and that it's a crazy invention of a crazy person. In any case, he portrays himself as the victim. It doesn't matter how many testimonies and pieces of evidence there are, as long as the majority of those who listen to him are like him, it's always been done and considered normal by everyone. Therefore, there is no crime at all.
It's easy to throw all their arguments in the trash with a single word: ISRAHEL.
Israhel is the pure essence of the United States and a living demonstration of what the West represents. All the evidence is there, but no one wants to admit it even if it's spit in your face.
The Judaism was created to end the slavery of polytheism, Christianity to end Roman slavery, and Islam to end Roman Christian apostolic slavery. Muslims abolished slavery 1000 years before the existence of the English themselves. That's why these religions spread so rapidly. Arabs had been trying to abolish slavery for millennia, and it wasn't definitively achieved until the arrival of Islam, which then spread throughout the world, except in Christian countries. The last country to abolish slavery was the United States, less than 100 years ago. These are facts that are still vivid in the current memory of their own descendants and those who continue to live today.
It's very common for racists to say that all Arabs are Muslims and all Muslims are Arabs, even though the vast majority of Muslims come from Southeast Asia. Arabs have been enslaving each other since the beginning of recorded history, and Arabs they are black, brown, and white as well. And no one on this planet, including the Chinese, who enslaved and punished for generations (read about the construction of the Great Wall of China), did what the Westerners did and continue to do.
They are now doing the same in Europe, saying that all the bad things Europeans did and continue to do are just a "black legend" propagated by left-wing institutions. In Spain, for example, they are already spouting nonsense from so-called "experts" who claim that if black people arrived in the Americas, it was on luxury cruises for tourism purposes, and if any of them became slaves, it's because another black person brought them there. The Spanish claim to be an example of moral/religious and racial tolerance because, unlike the English, they still had Amerindians and mixed with black people by Papal decree, making them morally superior to the English and the rest of the world. But it was nothing more than another form of colonization due to environmental and territorial difficulties. Now they're spreading victimization propaganda on behalf of killers and rapists.
There are several books that explain all of this in detail, based on facts and texts from that era, although you don't need to be a genius to see it and understand that this accumulation of events led to the current situation by one's own doing.
When you're about to destroy an entire civilization, you don't call it Christianization, Islamization, philosophization, or casualization; you call it COLON-IZATION. There are plenty of books that explain it clearly.
In my experience, no one gives a shit about the truth until they desire it like the air they breathe.
'Truth', eh? We've been denied truth for so long I doubt many people would recognize it - and many would reject it because it is too painful.
Lately, I have noticed an increase in videos, documentaries, TV shows, AI, books, and articles like this one on almost all informative platforms, all pointing in the same direction and dual ideology. I suspect we are in the midst of a cognitive war or a new phase of previous ideological wars, or perhaps a preparation for them.
All in order to see which side can gather more zombies to enslave without appearing as slaves themselves.
I suppose the upcoming wars will no longer be fought for the name of freedom but for who have the truth.
Truth. The Truth of God is what I am fighting for. But you know, God is the best of Judges and God is the Sovereign of the Day of Judgement, so I am very sure that Truth will win out.
It will be messy, but Truth will win. Allah u akbar!
Captured by Mongols in southern Russia, sold as slave to sultan in Syria, then ruling in Cairo, and later pushing back the Crusaders to Eastern Europe. A character that would provide material for one or several great movies.
His story is not convenient because it contradicts both WOKE prejudices and white supremacists' beliefs. That's why there are no movies about him.
from the North. Slavery became a symbol for Lincoln to offer the soldiers a reason
that the war was a just and worthy cause.