Slavery and Constitution

Slavery and Constitution

Introduction

The Constitution was drafted as a series of commitments to replace the Articles of Confederation. If our nation was to remain at liberty would have to stand together and this means that no State or another State may impose conditions which would be under the new government. One of the commitments made by the authors was made on the issue of slavery. Northern states were opposed and the southern states wanted to keep slavery [1].

Discussion

In mid-May 1787, fifty-five delegates, representing all states except Rhode Island met in Philadelphia for the sole purpose of establishing a better government and stronger central. Four months later, the Constitution of the United States of America was born. In the Constitution, the slavery of the word does not appear even once, however, the issue of slavery was intertwined with other important issues. Some believe that the Founding Fathers took a series of positive measures that showed his instincts against slavery and that, overall, drastically reduced the potential area of the slave population, and the ability to endure.

Although, as part of the commitment, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banned slavery in the Northwest Territories, the Founding Fathers did little to condemn or prohibit slavery in the Constitution. The problems at the convention were mainly economic and political, delegates looked for ways to reduce sectionalism and produce a more centralized government, and not how slavery should be regarded and treated. In fact, nearly all the delegates arrived at the Convention with the conviction that slavery was a "national institution" of individual states; the federal government had no right to impose restrictions or sanctions on the issue of slavery.

At the time of the Philadelphia Convention, the Northern States are largely independent of slavery, while Southern States, slavery has an irreplaceable role in the menial tasks of agriculture and others. The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote the famous lines "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" This bold statement raised many questions among people in the North and South. Slavery was not clearly consistent with the principles of the Revolution. Taking into account the economic situation, however, one can see that certainly would be easier to give up slavery in the North than the South, and that's exactly why the South fought vehemently to keep slavery. No matter how bad the whites thought that slavery was, the economy was almost always a priority. With the abolition of slavery, the South's economy would collapse completely and so far the damage to the entire nation, a nation that was still a baby sucking desperately needed food and nutrition.

An anonymous Carolina said in 1774 that the abolition would "complete the ruin of many provinces of America, and islands of the West Indies" (quoted in Wiecek 174). Northern states wanted to get rid of slavery, but did not want to lose the South, insisting that ...