The Constitution and Slavery

The Constitution and Slavery. . , The words "slave" and "slavery" are not in the U.S. Constitution as ratified, nor the word 'property' in connection with language alluding to slavery. At the Constitutional Convention, James Madison, a Virginian, said it would be "wrong to admit it in the Constitution the idea that there could be a property in man.", To secure ratification of the Constitution, the Founders reached compromises with pro-slavery delegates, including the Three-Fifths Compromise. Slave-holding delegates wanted enslaved people to be counted as whole persons to increase their political power. The agreement counded three-fifths of the enslaved population for representation and taxation, while free black people were counted fully., At the insistence of the Carolinas and Georgia, over the objections of Virginia, the Constitution prevented Congress from banning the importation of slaves until 1808. States were still free to outlaw the slave trade, something many had already done. Congress banned the importation of slaves on January 1, 1808., Abraham Lincoln declared that most Americans viewed slavery as "a vast moral evil" and "have rested in the belief that slavery was in course of ultimate extinction." He noted that this "was the belief of the framers of the Constitution itself." It however took Lincoln and a bloody Civil War to finish the work that the Founders had begun and end slavery in the United States once and for all.,

"I hold that the Federal government was never, in its essence, anything but an antislavery government. Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered.", , Frederick Douglass , Address for the Promotion of Colored Enlistments , Philadelphia, July 6, 1863

, We Hold These Truths ,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…", The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

, In 1776, there were about half a million enslaved people in British North America. They were mostly in the five southernmost colonies, where 40% of the population was made up of enslaved people. There were many Americans who defended slavery because of economic interests and opposed immediate action to abolish slavery. Many of the American Founders, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison, owned slaves., When the delegates to the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, they established a new nation of independent states. The new nation, the United States of America, was the greatest experiment in liberty ever conceived in the history of the world. Not only did the signers of the Declaration announce their independence from Great Britain, but they also stated the "self-evident" truths that "all men are created equal" and "endowed by their Creator" with the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These universal rights of mankind, recognized by the Founders in the Declaration as gifted by God, were to be the foundations of their new government. However, slavery was an odious and pernicious affront to the glorious rule of liberty proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and established in the United States Constitution., Fulfilling a Promise , The Declaration of Independence has guided every American freedom movement and inspired many others around the world., During the nineteenth century, the Declaration inspired abolitionists with different schools of thought amongst them who argued that slavery violated its claim that all men are created equal. Lincoln and his supporters worked politically to fulfill the promises of the Declaration. After the Union's victory in the Civil War, the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments ended slavery and secured protection, and voting rights for formerly enslaved people., In 1954, the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education struck down school segregation, ruling: "Such segregation is a denial of equality protection of the laws." Other Jim Crow segregation laws were struck down by subsequent legislation. Peaceful protests by King, Rosa Parks, and countless others led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, advancing the Declaration's promise of equality.,

"When the architects of our Great Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.", Martin Luther King, Jr. , "I Have a Dream" , August 28, 1963

, [Captions:] , George Washington served as the President of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. He was elected President of the United States in 1789 following the Constitution's ratification., King gave his most famous speech, "I Have a Dream," before the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.