Constitutional Debate: Federalists vs Anti-Federalists

Failures

 The Debates and Diplomacy during
the Constitutional Convention failed to address the issue of Slavery.
 

Slavery

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    The Constitutional Convention failed to address the issues of slavery. The Thirteenth amendment to the US Constitution to abolish slavery did not occur until 1865, nearly a hundred years after the Constitutional Convention. In fact during the Constitutional Convention, our Founding Fathers used slaves as a tool to gain more power in Congress although slaves were not given the right to vote nor were they considered American citizens with the same rights. Some abolitionists even burned copies of the US Constitution calling it a "slaveholders document" mainly because they felt that it was used to protect the rights and property of rich slave holders at the time. In fact the US Constitution gave the Federal Government power to "quash rebellions" which were most likely to be caused by slaves.
   

Did you know? that many of our Founding Fathers were slave owners?

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George Washington, the First President of the United States of America and the President of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, was a slave owner. Others include: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Rutledge and in fact they favored slavery.

James Horton: Benjamin Banneker Professor Emeritus of  
                                 American Studies and History
                                ~Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
"...the Constitution I think was very clear in that it protected the slaveholders property. There was a great deal of property protection in the Constitution and slaves fell under that. In the Constitution there were protections on the rights of citizens, but it was not clear at all that even free blacks were citizens of the country during this time. So there was very little specific information in the Constitution to encourage a free black person to feel that they had any kind of protection through that instrument."

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