Ambivalence: The Influence Of Founding Fathers On Slavery

In South, torn between the economic benefits of slavery and the moral and constitutional issues raised, and white Southerners grew more and more defensive. They argued that black people were incapable of caring for themselves. They said that slavery was a benevolent institution that kept them fed, clothed, and occupied. Most Northerners did not doubt that black people being inferior to whites, but they did doubt the benevolence of slavery. The Civil War changed the future of the United States.

With the passage of a harsher fugitive slave law as a part of the Compromise of 1850, the abolitionist movement became even more fervent in its efforts to halt slavery as abolitionists assisted runaways, abused slave catchers, and outright did not follow the federal law, even in the face of federal marshalls. As a result of this outright defiance of federal law, southerners’ connotations of the abolitionist movement being associated with the entire northern population were further solidified. In conjunction with the lack of enforcement of the fugitive slave law, southerners increasingly viewed the violent confrontations in Kansas as an outright effort to uproot slavery and its expansion. In an act of defiance against Stephen Douglas’s popular sovereignty established in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, abolitionists flooded into Kansas and Nebraska in an effort to incorporate both states as free states and directly halt the expansion of slavery into the territories. Violence and bloodshed broke out as pseudo-militia groups attacked one another in a low scale civil war.

He explains that a lack of perspective and superficial analysis meant that the constructive accomplishments of the Civil War era had been ignored . Essentially, “the two-dimensional characters that Dunning’s followers highlighted” reflects exaggeration and a failure to acknowledge the abolitionists’ efforts as “the last great crusade of the nineteenth century romantic reformers.” In additional Some of Stamps works have also focused on the idea of a ‘guilt theory’ where he details that the political impacts of succession during the Civil War era resulted in southern defeat due to an “internal collapse of morale among southerners.” However the plausibility of this argument remains questionable due to stamps lack of empirical evidence. Instead it could be argued that war and sacrifice tends to strengthen rather than dispel strongly held

This makes the reader easy to understand the point of the American Revolution or slave trade. The author also mentioned that he thinks that the slavery is the reason what made America a united country. The author also mentions that the slavery helped the constitution of United States get into shape. This book explains that the south people were afraid that north would let go off slavery. The north compromises but later the civil war solves the problem of slavery in United States.

Their audience were those who agreed with emancipation, and more specifically blacks who had just been free. Clearly from the image described, those two groups didn’t see blacks as their equals and despised them. Their purpose in creating this image was to install fear in blacks to keep them from voting and believing that they are equal to those in the ex-confederacy. The kkk had been using terror tactics all throughout the Reconstruction era because they didn’t want blacks to vote or participate in their politics the kkk wanted to keep white supremacy. For a while the South had enacted black codes which replaced the slave codes.

Jefferson wanted to abolish slavery but when freed they had to be removed from society since slaves took up most of Virginia’s population. In order to have a “disappearance” of an entirely black population Jefferson deported the future generation by shipping infants to Haiti. Jefferson believed deportation was the best solution because blacks and whites couldn’t coexist in America because of the nature of our color and intelligence. Blacks were “inferior” and were not capable of Christian virtue and salvation (Takaki 65). Many African Americans challenged Jefferson with evidence of what they are capable of but Jefferson refused to change his “opinion” (Takaki

I disagree that the Constitution is an “agreement with Hell,” because although there may be some sections that aren't ideal, the American Constitution is remarkable because it has the ability to change and adapt to the times. William Lloyd Garrison, a famous abolitionist, proposed that all states that don't keep slaves should secede from the Union because he felt that the Constitution heavily supported slavery. His argument is now not valid because the Constitution has been amended, and now slavery is illegal. No one today could claim that the United States as a nation supports slavery. William Wells Brown, a former slave, also advocated for the nullification of the Constitution.

The government levied a new poll tax they couldn 't afford and this meant they couldn 't vote anymore. The 'grandfather clause ' was introduced, it stated that any person whose grandfather was a slave didn 't have the right to vote. Through a literacy test they requested that uneducated slaves could vote. "Black codes" were introduced to forbid to black people the right to own a gun. A terrible racist society, called the Ku Klux Klan, was created in 1865 to prevent black people from gaining rights.

Although Mrs. Auld had great intentions to help Frederick but her husband on the other hand was against his education. Mr. Auld believed that literacy is an enemy to slaves and will ruin their lives. Fredrick as well mentions in his narration that “education and slavery were incompatible with each other” (Douglass). From this quote he mentions exactly what Mr. Auld referred to which made him question how important literacy really is. Douglass saw that Mr. Auld wanted to prevent black slaves to not become literate so slavery can still be alive.

Although there was a period following the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868 in which former slaves were granted citizenship, their involvement in politics became rendered by the lack of education previously provided to slaves and inability of “withstanding the economic, political, and paramilitary opposition of the white majority” (Frederickson 382). Frederickson argues African Americans simply did not have the time or preparation to oppose racist forces. Using paramilitary forces, southern redeemers easily made threats to reconstruction forces as seen through the emergence of the violent Ku Klux Klan during the election of 1866. The opportunity for African Americans to gain a stance in society was short lived by the racist efforts of democrats in the south and impartial ideals from

The South wanted to keep slaves while the North wanted to abolish them. In conclusion, the primary cause of the civil war was not slavery instead was the issue of states rights. The Northern armies won the Civil War and the the South returned to the Union. “The Civil War started because of differences between free slaves states and the power of the government that said if slavery was correct or incorrect.”(The Civil War in America Prologue). Slavery was right at that time but now it is wrong.

The North would have free states and the South would have slave states. If there was no split, the Civil War could have been prevented. This was called the sectional crisis between the North and the South. The North believed that slavery was immoral and wrong whereas the South depended on their slaves. The Mexican-American War was the start of the Civil War.