> It's fairly well documented that the Founding Fathers were pretty much all opposed to slavery, They couldn't have been that opposed to it or they themselves

> It's fairly well documented that the Founding Fathers were pretty much all opposed to slavery, They couldn't have been that opposed to it or they themselves wouldn't have kept owning slaves. Sure, Washington freed 'his' slaves when he died (modulo complications such as he intended them to be freed on Martha's death, but she freed 'his'--not 'hers'--early), but until then he did stuff like rotating 'his' slaves out of Philadelphia every few months so he wouldn't have to free them. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Posey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Posey which includes this quote: "The general's cook ran away, being now in Philadelphia, and left a little daughter of six at Mount Vernon. Beaudoin ventured that the little girl must be deeply upset that she would never see her father again; she answered, "Oh! Sir, I am very glad, because he is free now.") And not to get into Jefferson and Hemings, whom he started raping when she was 14 (whether you think a slave can consent, a child can not), and kept enslaved (along with their children) until his death. > The United States is one of the only unions on the planet in which every single member state (without exception) voluntarily ratified and agreed to join That 'without exception' is doing a lot of work in the case of Hawaii.