Whitney Burns
3/1/2015 10:51:11 pm
Compromise to keep Union together
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Bethany Chapman
3/1/2015 10:51:40 pm
Powerful families at the time did not consider slaves as people, but as property, and used this property to enhance their legacy.
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Slavery was kept in the Constitution in the spirit of compromise,even though many people at the time believed it to be very wrong. However, wealthy landowners/politicians,had such a pull that even a "nefarious" institution that disregarded the basic rights of people was allowed to exist.
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Karen hough
3/1/2015 10:52:26 pm
Slavery was a lucrative business. It has existed since ancient civilizations. Slavery led to choosing sides for the Civil War.
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Donna
3/1/2015 10:52:33 pm
The South had so much power that they forced the issue of slavery. BOTH North and South had $$$ (money) in this issue and where there is $$ people will follow.
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Mary Pegg Whitlock
3/1/2015 10:52:36 pm
"Men" = white men of property --> slaves are not men/citizens and have no legal rights
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MS
3/1/2015 10:52:42 pm
The issue of slavery was kept in the Constitution as a compromise. The Southern states would not have accepted the Constitution without this provision. It was also an economic issue for both North and South as tax revenue benefited the national coffers.
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Stephanie Case
3/1/2015 10:53:31 pm
The Founding Fathers allowed slavery to be present in the United States even though it appears to be contradictory to the Constitution itself (depending on the interpreter) because the southern states would not join the Union without the allowance of slavery. Slaves were viewed as an essential part of maintaining a high level of economic trade. Also, they were not viewed as human beings by many, which would exempt the from the statement "All men were created equal" anyways in their minds.
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Brian McKeown
3/1/2015 10:53:59 pm
At the time, slavery was an economic necessity of Southern states, and one must remember that the establishment and defense of the fledgling Union depended on the southern states ratification of the Constitution.
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E. Ford
3/1/2015 10:54:02 pm
The founding fathers were more interested in producing a viable country rather than holding up a philosophy of "all men are created equal." The founding fathers had varying opinions on the issue of slavery, but they recognized in all reality the Southern states were likely to opt out of the new Constitution if slavery was to be outlawed. Therefore, the practice of slavery continued as economic and political concerns trumped morality.
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Marcia
3/1/2015 10:54:14 pm
I think their ideals about equality were meant to be applied to themselves. Their opinions on slavery ranged from pro-slavery to abolitionist sentiments. However, the bottom line was about prosperity and a semblance of national political unity. Therefore, they were willing to table the discussion which only intensified the complexity of economic dependencies and moral ambiguity.
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Loretta Wilson
3/1/2015 10:54:29 pm
The founding fathers kept slavery in the constitution because they wanted a unified country which included the southern slave-holding states.
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Rebecca
3/1/2015 10:54:54 pm
The economic stability of people and states far outweighed the issue of slavery, therefore it was swept under the rug. Compromises needed to be made in order to ratify the Constitution and keep the southern states in the Union.
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Kelly
3/1/2015 10:54:58 pm
The founding fathers as well as influential community members in the southern states - North Carolina were wealthy landowners and slavery was economically important to their lifestyle. The idea of Federalism was strongly addresses by the framers as a way to appease southern landowners - and slavery was large part of what southerns thought was a state power.
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Wil Maney
3/1/2015 10:55:03 pm
Powerful and wealthy men were in charge of creating the laws and rules for this nation. Slavery was an important cause for their wealth especially in the South. When you threaten to take away something that could hurt your wealth or livelihood....the issue is most likely going to be swept under the rug.
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Kerri
3/1/2015 10:55:38 pm
The Founding Fathers kept slavery in the constitution because they did not consider black men as real "men." It was in the best interest, financially, to allow slavery.
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Edward
3/1/2015 10:55:47 pm
After looking at the four documents, it suggests an interest in keeping their present "agenda" in place.
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Kami Silver
3/1/2015 10:55:57 pm
Because they believed that the issue of slavery was not even considered to be slavery in some of their eyes. Therefore an issue such as slavery should be a moral decision decided upon freely by each state, owner, or person. They kept it termed as least offensively as possible so as not to push people into rebellion and keep solidarity to the nation. Slavery served to propel each state and the country to higher levels of production and profit. To give that up was considered to be unproductive and would in their minds set them back from other countries that would keep slavery. Slavery was the norm for the time...not just for them but also for the rest of the world.
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Nathan Lyda
3/1/2015 10:56:05 pm
Slavery was swept under the rug for the next generation to cleanup in the name of political compromise. Large amounts of bias exist in the sources on this topic making valid research difficult.
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Gouge
3/1/2015 10:56:15 pm
Putting 21st Century thought and morals into 18th/19th Century thinking is always difficult and subject to much debate.
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Todd Callaway
3/1/2015 10:56:39 pm
Considering that "all men are created equal" the Founding Fathers left the issue of slavery unaddressed in the Constitution because many of the men who wrote the document were slave owners themselves and many depended on the institution of slavery for their income. Along with the Frederick Douglass section of "The Constitution and Slavery", the other documents support the opinion of how and why the issue of slavery was not addressed in the Constitution. The issue of slavery lead to many compromises attempting to find away to ratify the Constitution and maintain slavery.
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Tiffani
3/1/2015 10:57:05 pm
The issue of slavery was kept as a compromise. Compromising would ensure ratification as well as benefiting the Union as a whole economically.
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Jenna K.
3/1/2015 10:57:36 pm
Considering that "all men are created equal," why did the Founding Fathers keep slavery in the Constitution?
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Anna Brawley
3/1/2015 10:59:27 pm
While Equality itself is an abstract concept,the founding fathers were more focused on the inequality of a singular monarch (an ocean way) being able to retake their fledgling country than the modern idea of all men (and women, regardless of race, religion, etc) being equal. The writers of the Constitution looked at the harsh reality that in order for the nation to succeed they needed the numbers of the South and the tax money that slavery (specifically from the tobacco and rice industries) brought to the table. Historically slavery made sense as economic benefit to farmers as a cheap source of labor to increase profits. Additionally the idea of a servant as a friend even while being owned was a historical reality. The idea of slavery being a moral issue, while in its infancy, would have been left up to the states to decided; most likely being seen as an over extension of the power of the Federal government to make a nation wide decision on slavery.
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Melinda
3/1/2015 11:04:59 pm
When the Declaration of Independence was written our founding fathers envisioned a new nation with enlightenment ideas/a more perfect government than had ever existed. When all of the representatives of all the colonies meet together it was well known that the South was not about to become a united nation without the issue of slavery intact. Representatives of South Carolina refused to sign the Declaration if the slavery issue was not put back into the regular document. John Adams was against slavery and argued to have slavery out of the document. South Carolina won this debate and the slavery issue continued to divide the country. At least half of the country felt that if their workforce/slaves ended that the South would economically cease to exist. In conclusion, many colonist did not believe the slaves were people much less equal and our founding father's allowed slavery because getting our freedom from England was more important at the time.
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LeAnna Delph
3/1/2015 11:05:26 pm
The document I read was by Frederick Douglass, and it confirmed some of my notions of why slavery was allowed in a country with a constitution such as ours. He mentioned the need to get the South on board with the Union and the North's desire to start up the government treasury with the taxes from slavery. Before reading the articles, I also predicted that the idea of "men being created equal" was a selective term and didn't apply to those who the Founders didn't want it to. They didn't want to deal with that issue just then, and instead chose to "kick the can" down the road of history. This idea was confirmed by the last document we read from the State Department. An idea that I added to my list after reading the texts was the attitude many slave holders used to justify their involvement in the institution of slavery. Many slave owners at the time of writing the Constitution did not engage in the most egregious versions of slavery that we think of associated with the Deep South plantations. Many slave owners also had very familial relationships with their slaves, which they felt justified their actions. Finally, the key role Virginia played in the founding of the USA was something I knew (having grown up in VA) but was refreshed in my mind by the Constitutional Convention piece.
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