Opus 2014-9: Founders: The Legacy of Slavery, part 1 of 6

Slavery has always been with us.

Slavery is making a comeback.

Slavery has never been just an American issue.

The Founding Fathers struggled with the concept of slavery.  Even people who owned slaves realized that the institution was a problem and deeply immoral.  We often are taught that it was totally ignored, but that is not true.  The Constitutional Convention almost came apart because of the passion against it.  By the time the Constitution was ratified the northern part of the country had already either made it illegal or began the process of eliminating it.

One of the insightful Founders was George Mason.  He represented the paradox.  He hated slavery with a passion, yet he owned slaves.  It is easy to judge and hard to get into the minds of people living in a world where slavery was accepted and normal.

I find one quote of Mason rather prophetic.  This is from a Website at Gunston Hall.

“This infernal trafic [sic] originated in the avarice of British Merchants. The British Govt. constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it. The present question concerns not the importing States alone but the whole Union…. Slavery discourages arts & manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the immigration of Whites, who really enrich & strengthen a Country. They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not [sic] be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities….[It is] essential in every point of view that the Genl. Govt. should have power to prevent the increase of slavery.”

To be continued...

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