[Strac6]

If we had picked our own damned cotton, we wouldn’t have these problems!

[\/\/ayne]

On February 12, 1790, a petition from Benjamin Franklin and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society was presented to the House of Representatives calling for the federal government to take steps for the gradual abolition of slavery and end the slave trade. The petition stated that slavery and the slave trade were incompatible with the values of freedom of the American Revolution.

Benjamin Franklin and His Fight to Abolish Slavery

[IC Ken]

Lets go back to when you needed to own property to vote.

[Nifster]

Had the US not fought a civil war over this it might be an interesting topic

[Scooter100]

I’m getting really POed about the U.S. being the slave bad guys in so many discussions. Give it up, pu-leezzz. Global slavery existed in MASSIVE numbers that dwarfed the U.S. long before and after Lincoln freed them in the CONUS. As all those lefties say, MoveOn.

[JimRed]

The 3/5 rule was only for determining the number of representatives per district, and the slaves could not vote anyway.

[Slyfox]

The first draft of the Declaration of Independence had a section on slavery with Jefferson stating what most of the Founders believed that slavery was wrong and a great evil. His editors told him that the Declaration was not the place to discuss slavery. The Declaration was intended as the cutting off of the colonies from the King of England. It was believed at the time that slavery would have to be dealt with at a later time as it indeed worked out.

In other words, they could not fight both a battle with England and those who preferred slavery all at the same time.

When the Declaration says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.

It was their intention to include everyone, including slaves.

[Paal Gulli]

Everyone is racist. Anyone claiming otherwise is either delusional or a liar or both.

The nation that spawned the USA still was slaughtering its own brown subjects by the hundreds with impunity as late as 1919. I’m not in the least ashamed of the fact that my American ancestors repented of that habit even before the English did.