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Do you have evidence that all of the founders thought slavery was categorically evil? I doubt this very much but could be wrong. Apparently they thought formi

by syki 5y ago

Do you have evidence that all of the founders thought slavery was categorically evil? I doubt this very much but could be wrong. Apparently they thought forming a more cohesive federal system was more important than abolishing slavery. As to what you wrote about the Quran and the Bible. From my perspective that provides convincing evidence that the supreme entity described in those books does not provide a reasonable example of “good”.

zozbot234 5y ago
"... He has waged cruel War against human Nature itself, violating its most sacred Rights of Life & Liberty in the Persons of a distant People who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into Slavery in another Hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their Transportation thither. This piratical Warfare, the Opprobrium of infidel Powers, is the Warfare of the CHRISTIAN King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a Market where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his Negative for suppressing every legislative Attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable Commerce: and that this Assemblage of Horrors might want no Fact of distinguished Die, he is now exciting those very People to rise in Arms among us, and to purchase that Liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the People upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former Crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one People, with Crimes which he urges them to commit against the Lives of another. ..." A passage which was removed from the Declaration of Independence in order to avoid unwanted controversy over the issue in Great Britain, which was yet to abolish slavery themselves. (It was finally abolished in 1833.)
Clubber 5y ago
I'm not sure about all of them, but here's a good summary. Take it for what you will; as always, real life is a lot more nuanced than a summary paper. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-resource/historical-context-constitution-and-slavery https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-res...
bhupy 5y ago
Pretty much every Founder thought that slavery was a huge political shit-sandwich that made Federalization difficult, and they all hoped that the Federal system would sow the seeds for its eventual abolition. The infamous Cornerstone Speech was an interesting view into the Founders' perspective. It was the speech given by the Vice President of the unrecognized Confederate States of America, describing the Confederate view of the Founders' philosophy: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1861stephens.asp https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1861stephens.asp > ...the new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."
- tptacek 5y ago
  This seems like tea-leaf-reading. Neither Jefferson nor Monroe freed a significant number of their slaves --- they owned many --- even from their death beds.
  - bhupy 5y ago
    I mean, it's as straightforward a characterization of Jefferson's views as it gets, and from contemporaries. I don't know about Monroe, but Jefferson was unable to free his slaves because he was deeply in debt (https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2015/07/the-debt-and-death-of-thomas-jefferson-2/ https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2015/07/the-debt-and-dea...). He was land (and slave) rich, but cash poor, and had he freed his slaves, his estate would have remained in debt. Jefferson also outlawed the international slave trade, which isn't really something one would be inclined to do if they didn't feel that slavery was an evil that needed to be abolished. Jefferson could have freed his slaves and left his estate in an irrecoverable debt for the greater cause of abolishing slavery, and at best you could argue that his unwillingness to do that constitutes some form of hypocrisy. That said, it's not at all obvious that his unwillingness to do that suggests that he _wasn't_ opposed to the institution of slavery itself, any more than a socialist/communist today that uses an iPhone is inherently a hypocrite.
rayiner 5y ago
> Do you have evidence that all of the founders thought slavery was categorically evil? Not all, but many of the founding fathers were strong abolitionists: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/03/america-founding-fathers-jefferson-washington-adams-race-civil-war/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/03/america-founding-father... > From my perspective that provides convincing evidence that the supreme entity described in those books does not provide a reasonable example of “good”. Christianity was a primary catalyst of abolitionist sentiment. Virtually every culture believes in their own specialness--European Christians are unusual in their almost fanatical commitment to equality of all before God's eyes. This was not lost on pro-slavery advocates of the time. The Vice President of the Confederacy, for example, condemned abolitionists as religious zealots, while portraying slavery as being consistent with science: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto... ("Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics.") Remember, this is the 19th century, before we understood anything about genetics. The notion that all people were really equal, despite e.g. the vastly different technological development of Europe versus Africa, was a religious or at least moral belief. It wasn't a fact you could prove with the science of the time.
- syki 5y ago
  ....European Christians are unusual in their almost fanatical commitment to equality of all before God's eyes. At the time they did not overall believe this. At least not in deed. Some did and most didn't. Indeed, 100 years after the Civil War major American cities experienced massive declines in population due to the white flight that ensued as a result of desegregation. Also consider Irish treatment of blacks in New York City during the Civil War. There were Biblical justifications for slavery since the book does not outright say it is wrong. One justification was that Ham was cursed. ....isn't that they practiced slavery, but that they recognized that it was categorically evil (not just evil in particular applications). It simply isn't true that at that the time Europeans more or less universally thought slavery was categorically evil.

by syki 5y ago

zozbot234 5y ago

"... He has waged cruel War against human Nature itself, violating its most sacred Rights of Life & Liberty in the Persons of a distant People who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into Slavery in another Hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their Transportation thither. This piratical Warfare, the Opprobrium of infidel Powers, is the Warfare of the CHRISTIAN King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a Market where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his Negative for suppressing every legislative Attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable Commerce: and that this Assemblage of Horrors might want no Fact of distinguished Die, he is now exciting those very People to rise in Arms among us, and to purchase that Liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the People upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former Crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one People, with Crimes which he urges them to commit against the Lives of another. ..." A passage which was removed from the Declaration of Independence in order to avoid unwanted controversy over the issue in Great Britain, which was yet to abolish slavery themselves. (It was finally abolished in 1833.)

Clubber 5y ago

I'm not sure about all of them, but here's a good summary. Take it for what you will; as always, real life is a lot more nuanced than a summary paper. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-resource/historical-context-constitution-and-slavery https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-res...

bhupy 5y ago

Pretty much every Founder thought that slavery was a huge political shit-sandwich that made Federalization difficult, and they all hoped that the Federal system would sow the seeds for its eventual abolition. The infamous Cornerstone Speech was an interesting view into the Founders' perspective. It was the speech given by the Vice President of the unrecognized Confederate States of America, describing the Confederate view of the Founders' philosophy: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1861stephens.asp https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1861stephens.asp > ...the new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

tptacek 5y ago
This seems like tea-leaf-reading. Neither Jefferson nor Monroe freed a significant number of their slaves --- they owned many --- even from their death beds.
- bhupy 5y ago
  I mean, it's as straightforward a characterization of Jefferson's views as it gets, and from contemporaries. I don't know about Monroe, but Jefferson was unable to free his slaves because he was deeply in debt (https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2015/07/the-debt-and-death-of-thomas-jefferson-2/ https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2015/07/the-debt-and-dea...). He was land (and slave) rich, but cash poor, and had he freed his slaves, his estate would have remained in debt. Jefferson also outlawed the international slave trade, which isn't really something one would be inclined to do if they didn't feel that slavery was an evil that needed to be abolished. Jefferson could have freed his slaves and left his estate in an irrecoverable debt for the greater cause of abolishing slavery, and at best you could argue that his unwillingness to do that constitutes some form of hypocrisy. That said, it's not at all obvious that his unwillingness to do that suggests that he _wasn't_ opposed to the institution of slavery itself, any more than a socialist/communist today that uses an iPhone is inherently a hypocrite.

rayiner 5y ago

> Do you have evidence that all of the founders thought slavery was categorically evil? Not all, but many of the founding fathers were strong abolitionists: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/03/america-founding-fathers-jefferson-washington-adams-race-civil-war/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/03/america-founding-father... > From my perspective that provides convincing evidence that the supreme entity described in those books does not provide a reasonable example of “good”. Christianity was a primary catalyst of abolitionist sentiment. Virtually every culture believes in their own specialness--European Christians are unusual in their almost fanatical commitment to equality of all before God's eyes. This was not lost on pro-slavery advocates of the time. The Vice President of the Confederacy, for example, condemned abolitionists as religious zealots, while portraying slavery as being consistent with science: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto... ("Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics.") Remember, this is the 19th century, before we understood anything about genetics. The notion that all people were really equal, despite e.g. the vastly different technological development of Europe versus Africa, was a religious or at least moral belief. It wasn't a fact you could prove with the science of the time.

syki 5y ago
....European Christians are unusual in their almost fanatical commitment to equality of all before God's eyes. At the time they did not overall believe this. At least not in deed. Some did and most didn't. Indeed, 100 years after the Civil War major American cities experienced massive declines in population due to the white flight that ensued as a result of desegregation. Also consider Irish treatment of blacks in New York City during the Civil War. There were Biblical justifications for slavery since the book does not outright say it is wrong. One justification was that Ham was cursed. ....isn't that they practiced slavery, but that they recognized that it was categorically evil (not just evil in particular applications). It simply isn't true that at that the time Europeans more or less universally thought slavery was categorically evil.