Essay Prompt B

The enslavement of Africans was and still is one of the biggest mistakes the United States government has ever made. Enslaving all those Africans, during the time of the Revolution to the brink of the Civil War, was in fact not seen as a horrible and inhuman act. Frankly, the people of the South believed that slavery was the best option of labor during that time. Considering the fact that the slaves were not paid, their living conditions were poor, and their food supply was very minimal, Slaveholders did not need to spend much expenses on their slaves. The North, however believed that slavery was wrong; forcing people to leave their country, to work, and eventually to die from either situation did not boat well with them. So during the Constitutional Convention the contrasting ideas of slavery from both the North and South’s perspectives and wishes were not liked by each other. Eventually the framers idea to remove or to keep slavery in the United States Constitution had to be overlooked. The framers of the Constitution were right not to attempt to abolish slavery and the framers are forgiven; even though slavery is wrong and shameful.
A reason that it was a good idea for the framers to not attempt to abolish slavery is because the South was threatening constantly to leave the Union if slavery was to be abolished. One republican Charles Pinckney believed that the Southern states economy was based around the free labor of slaves. Without the slaves the South’s total cash balance would be diminished to nothing. Also he believed that the white man was far superior to the black man in every shape and form. He states that “They [Africans] certainly must have been created with less intellectual power than the whites, and were most probably intended to serve them, and be the instruments of their cultivation.” One last example is that South Carolina said they would secede from the Union, which rippled to all the other Southern states and then soon they all threatened to...