Today in class we discussed the political state of the United States after having recently won the Revolutionary War. One of the topics that came up during the discussion was slavery and we learned that the United States government decided to not address it which I thought was a debatable topic. So my question is, do you think that the United States made the right decision to continue the practice of slavery and allow it to be legal or should they have taken action as soon as possible?
Personally, I think the United States made the correct decision to not delve deeper into finding a solution for slavery at the time. Why? Because if they had started to try to abolish slavery, there would have been a conflict between the North and the South, which would have broken the country and halted any kind of progress toward creating a stable government. Naturally, a strong government was required to ensure the survival of the newly created country. The United States already had a weak structure because they were a newly formed and an independent country; creating a conflict over a matter that had been a part of colonial/American society for centuries would have definitely weakened the United States and they could not afford to be any weaker when they could barely fend for themselves without the aid of Britain. Obviously slavery is wrong and this was eventually acknowledged, but at the time I believe that the United States made the right decision in not trying to solve the problem right then because they were too fragile to partake in the conflict that would have ensued and already had to worry about creating a system of government that satisfied all 13 states.
What do you guys think?
I agree that the idea of abolishing slavery would've just fractured the unstable government. The northern states most likely saw slavery as wrong as well since they had already emancipated the slaves. However they saw a threat to the government if they tried to make the South also abolish slavery. Abolishing slavery would have to wait for a stronger America.
ReplyDelete@Micheal Alexander
ReplyDeleteI agree with the points you have made about why bringing up the conflict of slavery would be an issue, however, I would add that by bringing up the issue of slavery the ratification of any new form of government would be delayed. Although unity was very important in this developmental period, I wonder if the government could use the problem of slavery to their advantage. By declaring that slavery is illegal, it would show citizens that the government does have a significant amount of power. There would be unnecessary riots, but if America made it through a revolution, protests would hardly be an issue; in the long run it would have saved the government a lot of time. Another point to mention is that by making slavery illegal, African-Americans would not truly be free as they would still have to work in order to earn money; they would end up back on the plantations anyway.
Rishub, I agree that by making slavery illegal the government would have shown the citizens their power, as Washington did with the crushing of Shays Rebellion, but you pose a very difficult question. If America went into another rebellion against its own government, would they make it out in one piece, as a unified nation? This unification was the major goal at this time. If it did make it through a revolution, it would have saved time, but it they didn't it would have completely fractured the new nation, maybe to the point that they could not unite again. So, I think that Congress made the right choice in not specifically addressing the issue of slavery.
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