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I am currently reading a history of the Seminole wars.

The South was ravenous for land to economically expand the plantation system and thus slavery.

It was a way of life

Indian removal was part of that cost.

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Slaves weren’t people. They were property

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Regardless of what you post, the fact remains the fight to end slavery in America began in 1776, as I documented in the OP.

Why is there so much resistance to acknowledging this fact and instead, continually paint our nation’s founding as embracing slavery, and our Founders evil?

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They worked to end slavery right up until the invention of the cotton gin and then money became more important.

Also… I don’t categorize the founders as evil.

I think that in a lot of ways they did not live up the ideals that they espoused.

But that is the American contradiction

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So now you agree my statement was accurate?

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“They”?

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Only if you ignore a ton of history and what came in the years where the same people who wrote the Constitution actually ran a government.

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Some of them.

Quakers were on the right side of history on this issue.

But when they started to preach on the Eastern Shore of Virginia in the 1790’s and there was a rash of manumission happening… there was all of a sudden a problem with what to do with free blacks people doing whatever they wanted.

So the Virginia legislature made laws prohibiting Quakers from preaching and made manumission harder.

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Either the fight to end slavery in America began in 1776, or it didn’t. So, did the fight to end slavery in America begin in 1776 during the beginning of our nation’s founding?

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The fight to end slavery began earlier than that.

1776 was a war for independence from England and had little to do with slavery until Cornwallis flirted with the idea of using the internal enemy of slaves against the Southern colonies. That led the Continental Congress to make it so slaves that took up arms would win their freedom… because better that they fight for the colonies than England.

By 1782 the Commonwealth of VA had passed a very liberal manumission law that allowed for the freeing slaves without need for permission from the government.

But by 1806 they had pretty much completely reversed that course.

So one can make an argument that the generation that made up the founding of the country worked to end slavery on 1776 and 1787 if one completely ignores what the exact same people did in the subsequent couple of decades.

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Seems our hate America crowd is intent on ignoring historical facts such as those mention in the OP

“… after the Revolutionary War and the people of America gained their independence from foreign domination [the real culprit of slavery on American soil] the people within a number of the states, exercising their newly found freedom, quickly moved to share the blessings of liberty to all by abolishing slavery! For example, the people of Vermont took this immediate action in its 1777 declaration of rights, which declared “no…person born in this country, or brought here over sea, ought to be holden by law to serve any person as a servant, slave, or apprentice”. Likewise, the Massachusetts constitution of 1780 declared that “all men are born free and equal” and was used by the court a few years after its adoption to legally forbid any person to be held as a slave. And, in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance stated “there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” By the year 1788 all the states north of Maryland , except New York and New Jersey, had legislated to extinguish slavery, and by 1804 the remaining two northern states [ N.Y. and N.J.] had put slavery to rest.”

JWK

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This isn’t about hating America.

This is about understanding our own history

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I respectfully disagree. I do agree that

Was probably a big factor, but then again 1)-Since when did power give a rip about the poors?, and 2)-national and high level state political power was the exclusive province of the plantation class.

To paraphrase Sinclair, it’s hard to get a man to end a thing when his power, prestige, money, and way of life depends on that thing.

Now, we all know the poors will eventually rebel against a system of economic suppression, but that eventuality can be forestalled for a long time if the aristos can get the poors to buy into propaganda. Like say, for example “this is a state’s rights issue” or “slavery is actuality good; we are civilizing them and giving them Christ”.

Which all is to say

3)-when it came time to fight, kill, and die, the poors enthusiastically took up the cause in direct contradiction of their own interests.

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Good God. Support slavery or you hate America.:roll_eyes:

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Government school teachers teaching their students that our Constitution made Blacks three-fifths of a person is not about hating American, and accusing our founders of being evil? Is that so?

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Not really. SOME did.

But the Confederacy had to conscript 400,000 men over the course of the war because enthusiasm for the war died fairly quickly and even the early volunteers started leaving at the end of their 12 month contracts.

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Slaves were of diminishing economic value the further west the country expanded - water.

Tennessee had as many fight for the union as the confederacy.

Texas fought feuds for years after the civil war over it.

Follow the water, follow the change.

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And the early volunteers were who from where?

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Nonsense. The constitution didn’t make them people, it merely apportioned property for political gain.

Now: “evil” is a sticky subject. Nevertheless, a value neutral recounting and assessment of what happened could quite reasonably lead a student to conclude
That evil was involved. This is a risk you take when you advocate for slavery.

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What is nonsense and a deliberate attack on the founding of the United States is the big lie its constitution made blacks three fifths of a person.