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>With no Constitution, slavery might have persisted for much longer. There is experimental data here; France, from 1315 has prohibited slavery in mainland Fra

by lsc 9y ago

>With no Constitution, slavery might have persisted for much longer. There is experimental data here; France, from 1315 has prohibited slavery in mainland France, and moreover any slave setting foot on the soil of mainland France would be instantly freed, at least in the eyes of French law, from then on, and at the time, France was an absolute monarchy. The UK eliminated slavery in 1833, long before the US did, and they don't have a proper constitution to this day. The fact that we were one of the last developed countries to eliminate slavery shows that our constitution did not hurry the day that slavery would be eliminated.

tnzn 9y ago
You mean empirical data right ?
- lsc 9y ago
  Empirical is more correct, though I was trying to make an allusion to "The great republic experiment."
WalterBright 9y ago
If you were a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, what would you have done?
- lsc 9y ago
  I still think you are responding to a comment two levels up from mine. I entered the thread saying that as a "moral leader" owning slaves reflected badly on Jefferson[1] - Certainly, the fact that slavery was allowed by the constitution made it less of a good document, but if you note, I didn't say that owning slaves diminished his role as an author of the constitution; I only said that owning slaves diminished his standing as a moral leader. Of course, writing a constitution that accepted and protected slavery diminishes his standing as someone who wrote an important document on the road towards progress, because even by the standards of the time, that was not particularly progressive. I personally wonder how necessary a constitution is for a functional republic; it is supposed to protect the rights of the minority, but I'm not sure the historical evidence comes out in that direction. To more directly address the question, I honestly don't know. My first instinct is to exclude the south. Of course, that excludes most of the founders. But think of what an industrial powerhouse we would have had to become to survive, without the agricultural money. Would we have made it without them and the agricultural money, which mattered a lot more back then? would they have joined us in a more peaceful sort of way? Would we have ended up conquering them anyhow, and perhaps subjugating them in a way that ended up being better than what happened during our timeline, the appeasement in the name of unification? I don't know. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698270

by lsc 9y ago

tnzn 9y ago

You mean empirical data right ?

lsc 9y ago
Empirical is more correct, though I was trying to make an allusion to "The great republic experiment."

WalterBright 9y ago

If you were a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, what would you have done?

lsc 9y ago
I still think you are responding to a comment two levels up from mine. I entered the thread saying that as a "moral leader" owning slaves reflected badly on Jefferson[1] - Certainly, the fact that slavery was allowed by the constitution made it less of a good document, but if you note, I didn't say that owning slaves diminished his role as an author of the constitution; I only said that owning slaves diminished his standing as a moral leader. Of course, writing a constitution that accepted and protected slavery diminishes his standing as someone who wrote an important document on the road towards progress, because even by the standards of the time, that was not particularly progressive. I personally wonder how necessary a constitution is for a functional republic; it is supposed to protect the rights of the minority, but I'm not sure the historical evidence comes out in that direction. To more directly address the question, I honestly don't know. My first instinct is to exclude the south. Of course, that excludes most of the founders. But think of what an industrial powerhouse we would have had to become to survive, without the agricultural money. Would we have made it without them and the agricultural money, which mattered a lot more back then? would they have joined us in a more peaceful sort of way? Would we have ended up conquering them anyhow, and perhaps subjugating them in a way that ended up being better than what happened during our timeline, the appeasement in the name of unification? I don't know. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698270