Re: The founding fathers of this failing nation were a bunch of hypocrites. They write the Constitution say "all men are created equal" yet they owned slaves.
Posted by:
Scholar
()
Date: July 19, 2017 10:47PM
the truth!!!! Wrote:
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> Bottomline though is that slavery wasn't abolished
> during the founding father's reign.
At the time, it was considered a matter for the individual states to allow slavery, or not. This is one reason why I laugh at the Confederate apologists who holler about the Civil War's being about "States' Rights". Before the outbreak of the Civil War, the Southern States showed absolutely no respect for the rights of the Northern States to keep slavery without their borders and to refuse to support so vile an institution. In fact, some of the Northern States considered slavery to be so vile, disgusting and repugnant, that three of them actually did something to get rid of it even before the War of Independence ended (September, 1783, for the benefit of you public school "graduates").
Article One of the Vermont Constitution of 1777 bans slavery. Yes, Vermont was not admitted to the Union until 1791, Still, its men fought, bled and died alongside the men of the Thirteen States to rid America of the yoke of the British oppressors. The current Vermont Constitution is the same as that of 1777, The only changes were: 1) the elimination of the complaints against New York and New Hampshire in the original preamble and 2) the amendments that have been added over the years. Article One of the current Vermont Constitution is the same as Article One of the Vermont Constitution of 1777.
In 1780, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a measure that provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It took until the Census of 1830 for there to be no slaves in Pennsylvania, but the law did pass before the end of the War of Independence.
In Massachusetts, slavery became effectively illegal in 1781; absolutely illegal in the Spring of 1783 (recall that the War of Independence ended in September, 1783). Massachusetts abolished slavery by judicial review; the only state that ever abolished slavery in that manner. By 1775, both Massachusetts and Vermont were in open, armed revolt against the English crown. In fact, it was the men of Massachusetts and Vermont who led the rest of the nation into the field against the English. While the men of Virginia were making fancy speeches that the English crown ignored, the men of Massachusetts and Vermont were in the field speaking to the British oppressor in the only languages that oppressors understand: gunpowder, lead and iron. No less a flower-tongued Virginia slave owner than Patrick Henry acknowledged this, and, acknowledged it for the record.
Texas was not the last slave state admitted to the Union. In June, 1863, Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union as a slave state. West Virginia was the only slave state admitted during the Civil War. West Virginia subsequently did abolish slavery in February, 1865.
There were five states where slavery was allowed that did not secede: Missouri, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and New Jersey. New Jersey and Delaware were under gradual abolition when the Civil War commenced. New Jersey finished it during the war. In Delaware, there were some nine-hundred slaves left at the conclusion of the Civil War. They would not go free until the Thirteenth Amendment took effect in December, 1865. Kentucky never did abolish slavery. The slaves there also did not go free until December, 1865. Missouri and Maryland abolished slavery during the war. Ironically, Maryland did so on 12 October, 1864, the same day that Roger Taney died.
It is to be noted that one Confederate State, Tennessee, did abolish slavery in 1865, before the Civil War did end. That action was largely moot, as large chunks of Tennessee had been in Yankee hands for most of the war.