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Originally Posted by timpage
The fact that many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves is a "smear issue?" Huh? I always am amused the way you idiots try to side-step that undeniable fact when utilizing the argument that the Constitution means what the Founding Father's meant at the time they wrote it....an argument that, by definition requires you to accept the proposition that slave ownership is lawful. And that the Africans who were enslaved by those Founding Fathers didn't qualify as human beings, just property. I guess ignoring it allows you to invoke their wisdom regarding who qualifies as "human".
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it is a tactic, devised of recent vintage, to denigrate the founders as slave owners, and by inference their works, namely a reverence for the Constitution.
Walter Williams has noted that during the Clarence Thomas hearings for the supreme court, joe biden demonstrated that the constitution's framers thoughts and ideas concerning natural law must be trivialized, OR THE FRAMERS MUST BE SEEN AS RACISTS.
there is a lot of propaganda regarding the slave issue. it was here 200 years before the founding fathers.
there were some attempts to eliminate slavery prior to the revolution, which were always put down by the British.
thomas jefferson gave as one of the reasons for the separation from Britian, the desire to rid America of slavery.
John Jay, the Supreme Court Chief Justice, noted that before the founding fathers, no serious attempts were made to dismantle slavery.
the revolution was a turning point in people's attitudes towards slavery.
the words of the declaration of independence and the ideas embedded in the constitution started that long, hard road to its elimination. and yes, there were contradictions and actions of men that seemed at odds with the ideas in the constitution, but the ideas and words were why that tension was there. now there was a standard to try to live up to.
benjamin franklin gave thought to the idea that separation from Great Britain was necessary since every attempt to end slavery in the colonies had up to then been thwarted by the Crown.
many founding fathers released slaves they had owned.
Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush founded a society for the abolition of slavery. John Jay was president of a similar society.
Other signers of the declaration were members of such societies including
Richard Basset, James Madison, James Monroe, Charles Carroll, William Few, John Marshall, Richard Stockton, Zephaniah Swift and others.
Based on these efforts, states began outlawing slavery, including Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in 1780, Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, New Hampshire in 1792, Vermont in 1793, New York in 1799 and New Jersey in 1804, all a consequence, and all soon after the revolution, of the constitution and declaration and efforts of founding fathers and others.
The admission of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa as states was under a federal law outlawing slavery authored by Rufus King, a signer of the constitution, and signed by George Washington.
Were there pro slave founders? yes, but the very words of the declaration and constitution and acts of many founders set in motion its abolition.
It is currently charged that the 3/5ths of a personage held in the constitution for blacks is evidence of its racism. Nothing could be further from the truth and is a rank misportrayal. Records of the convention clearly reveal the 3/5ths clause was an ANTI-SLAVERY proposal. It was to restrict the political power of pro slavery states in an effort to ultimately abolish slavery. Pro-slavery states wished to count slaves in their population for purposes of increased representation. IT, THE 3/5ths CLAUSE, WAS NOT A REPRESENTATION OF HUMAN WORTH, but a restriction on political power.
to rid america of slavery and its aftermath has been a long hard slog, begun in large part by the founding fathers.
