That’s not the question they would ask. Slaves were considered property, not people. Well, until they became 3/5 of a person. And finally, much later on a full person.
I think it’s unproductive to treat the founding fathers as a monolith. What Franklin and Hamilton believed was markedly different than the likes of Patrick Henry or Jefferson
3/5 compromise wasent even about considering them as “mostly” people. It was about how they should be counted as far as a census was concerned, in order to determine the amount of congressional representation for that state. They still had no rights and were fully considered property.
Even during the 3/5th era, they were 0/5ths a person and an extra 3/5th a person to the slave owners who could actually vote. Spoiler alert: the slave owners did not vote with their slave’s best interests in mind.
My understanding is that many of them saw it as more of a necessary evil vaguely justified on racial grounds. We need to be willing to talk about and acknowledge America’s racist history with the slave trade, but we also need to understand the era and the fact that it was never broadly accepted as the right way to do things.
This might make folks uncomfortable, but it’s not all that dissimilar to folks buying cheap imported stuff today built primarily for the US consumer in sweatshop conditions, via outright slavery, and/or with various child labor schemes often at an extreme cost to the health of the environment. We’ve made things better but we’ve also recreated some of the problems that we’d destroyed in the WW II era with the justification of indirection (“well I didn’t do it, the big company I bought from did it”) instead of racism.
I fully expect a future generation to hold us to the pitchforks for buying cheap junk on Amazon or at Walmart and not ever asking “what behavior am I supporting? How did they make this at this price?”
“why are all these black people not in slavery?”
That’s not the question they would ask. Slaves were considered property, not people. Well, until they became 3/5 of a person. And finally, much later on a full person.
true, the founders were even worse than I could put into words
And yet, there are people, right now, who idolize that.
yeah, the republican party and every single one of their voters
I think it’s unproductive to treat the founding fathers as a monolith. What Franklin and Hamilton believed was markedly different than the likes of Patrick Henry or Jefferson
A large majority of the founders would disagree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_who_owned_slaves
3/5 compromise wasent even about considering them as “mostly” people. It was about how they should be counted as far as a census was concerned, in order to determine the amount of congressional representation for that state. They still had no rights and were fully considered property.
If only Jon brown had been one of the founders.
Oh absolutely. It was the southern whites wanting more power than they are worth.
Even during the 3/5th era, they were 0/5ths a person and an extra 3/5th a person to the slave owners who could actually vote. Spoiler alert: the slave owners did not vote with their slave’s best interests in mind.
I sincerely doubt they’d be asking that. Many of them would probably be happy we’d moved past that point.
https://www.history.com/news/declaration-of-independence-deleted-anti-slavery-clause-jefferson
My understanding is that many of them saw it as more of a necessary evil vaguely justified on racial grounds. We need to be willing to talk about and acknowledge America’s racist history with the slave trade, but we also need to understand the era and the fact that it was never broadly accepted as the right way to do things.
This might make folks uncomfortable, but it’s not all that dissimilar to folks buying cheap imported stuff today built primarily for the US consumer in sweatshop conditions, via outright slavery, and/or with various child labor schemes often at an extreme cost to the health of the environment. We’ve made things better but we’ve also recreated some of the problems that we’d destroyed in the WW II era with the justification of indirection (“well I didn’t do it, the big company I bought from did it”) instead of racism.
I fully expect a future generation to hold us to the pitchforks for buying cheap junk on Amazon or at Walmart and not ever asking “what behavior am I supporting? How did they make this at this price?”