English Question
1. You will need to have at least 300 words in this post plus full references due …Research must be done in the library using JSTOR database or other sources that are creditable.
2. Also 2 peer responses that make a contribution to the historical discussion with at least 100 words for each required response due Sunday. Research must be done in the library using JSTOR database or other sources that are creditable.
3. You must reference using one of the three formats and following your major’s designated style: MLA, APA, CS, Kate L. Turabian’s Manual, and the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS). YOU MUST CITE YOUR SOURCES! (See syllabus for links to the Style websites to learn how to cite and references)
Citations/references use your major degree’s style. See the link for your major’s style:
Citation Styles by Major: https://apus.libguides.com/programstyleguides
Using your textbook and internet resources…answer the following for your discussion.
Declaration of Independence—-
Pick one Founding Father and explain to the class how they dealt with the new American nation and the issue of Slaves and Slavery?
Explain if they were for or against keeping slavery in America and what they did politically to ensure their choice was heard.
Remember a FOUNDING FATHER is somewas involved in the Founding of our nation so they were alive and working in government from 1774 to 1814. Please note this education will showcase History that will contradict your earlier education…some of the founding fathers had no intention in freeing slaves due to their income relied on slave labor. And some politicians never wanted to abolish slavery because the economy of the new nation depended on the resources labored by slaves. Please read: Slavery and the Founding Fathers. Of the Constitutional Convention participants- 49% of the delegates were slave owners = 55 delegates/27 owned slaves.
reply 1
——–S Ross
The founding fathers were George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and Patrick Henry. Some were all for slavery and some were against it.
When Franklin was younger he did have slaves and advertised slaves that were being sold. While he was doing this he also published posters that were against slavery. While doing this he was making money off of it. He did not speak up until later in his life. Franklin later published his essays supporting the end of slavery. His last public action was sending Congress a petition on behalf of the Society asking to end slavery and a end to the slave trade. The petition was signed but he died before it came into reality. So with all this being said he was against it and proved it in many ways with action.
In 1757 while he was in London, his slaves were known to make a small salary, which is not normal because slaves were not making any money earlier in the years. In the 18th century the law had no legal basis in England but they were still mostly treated like they were enslaved if they were black and from overseas. During this time there were a lot of escapes happening.
The campaign in Britain to abolish slavery would not begin until the 1760s and was supported by both black and white abolitionists. The movement was characterized by a landmark judicial case in 1772, where Lord Mansfield ruled, in the case of the enslaved James Somerset, that there could be no such thing as an enslaved human on English soil. This decision and the influences of John Woolman and Anthony Benezet are the reason for the shift in Franklin’s views toward slavery. This is when Franklin attacked slavery in the paper for the first time.
In conclusion, I love his story of the life he lived. You can see how much he fought for us and did everything in his power to ban slavery. By showing his slaves kindness and letting their worth be shown really pulled me towards him. We know the word slave means workers but they also do not get treated in any fair manner. It warms my heart just a tad bit in this situation.
Heritage fund. (n.d.). Benjamin Franklin and Slavery. Benjamin Franklin House. https://benjaminfranklinhouse.org/education/benjamin-franklin-and-slavery/
Kelly, Robin, and Earl Lewis. To Make Our World Anew: Volume I: A History of African Americans To 1880. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Online Library for Liberty. “Benjamin Franklin on making the transition from slavery to civil liberty (1789).” Liberty Fund. Accessed May 13, 2024. https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/benjamin-franklin-on-making-the-transition-from-slavery-to-civil-liberty-1789.
War, R. (2020, March 5). Slavery and the founding fathers: Facts, information & history. Revolutionary War. https://www.revolutionary-war.net/slavery-and-the-founding-fathers/
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reply 2
Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Founding fathers of the nation who at the time were not only great men by virtue of their work ethic. Nor by the enlightenment they held in the hopes and promises of an independent tomorrow free from British rule. However, these men live within a paradox of their time. One in which they openly perpetuated and privately disapproved. Whether due to the means of necessity, ignorance or simply holding the views of the zeitgeist. These men in their pursuit of a land governed by freedom and democracy, denied those same freedoms to the very people who toiled that very land in its agriculture. Nurtured them and their youth in the houses they call homes and would continually deny them their basic human rights well into many decades later.
George Washington was born in 1732, to a father of great standing in the planter field as well as serving as the justice of the county court. After his half brother ‘s death in 1742 the young Washington would go on to inherit the older brother’s 2,650 acre estate of Mount (Vernon Hirschfeld, F. (1997). The estate consisted primarily in the use of slave labor to cultivate the tobacco crop that was growing there. Estimated slaves of the estate saw some then two hundred slaves in service there. When then eleven year old Washington’s father died a year later he would inherit another ten slaves from him and would within a short couple of years draft up the Division of slaves. The draft which would then see the proper distribution of slaves from the various families residing on the Washington estate (Cunliffe, M. (2017). Before Washington is even old enough for a proper education, the troubling ideals of the time have already been thoroughly addressed.
However, Washington’s view on the matter of purchasing and selling others would later change well into the later years of his life. With him later into the 1780’s opposing the sale and separation of slaves and their families. However this view still did not stop him from owning well over 126 slaves and holding over 300 within the estate. Though never openly distasteful of slavery it can be noted in many personal letters and records his disdain for it. “With respect to the negros, I conclude it is not in my power to answer your wishes-because it is as much against my inclinations as it can be against yours’s, to hurt the feelings of those unhappy people by a separation of man and wife” (Hirschfeld, F. (1997). Again while Washington believed the separation and purchase of slaves and their families was immoral in private amongst friends and colleges..His public legislation appeared otherwise with it being most evident in his 1793 Fugitive Slave act. Which allowed for the slaveholders to capture escaped slaves even if they made it to free states/territories (3).
Washington’s mindset on the rights and freedoms of blacks at the time were very mixed as his words painted one picture and his actions another. This being even seen in his last will and testament where he like many other founding father’s placed the freedom of their slaves once they were laid to rest. The dichotomy of fighting for freedom while denying those same freedoms to people who both provided your livelihood and in most cases raised you, perplexes many even to this day. While his legacy as the great general of the revolution, or as the United States first president, it is undeniable his impact and lack of public discourse over the subject led to continued atrocities of hundreds of thousands of African Americans. However, it is also of note that Washington’s understanding of the union’s infrastructure of slavery was perhaps too deep to openly oppose him , even stating that the division of the nation would be directly in correlation to it. “I can clearly foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.” (Cunliffe, M. (2017).
In conclusion Washington was a complicated individual when it came to slavery. While being very active in the purchasing and selling of slaves in the beginning portion of his life. Well into the revolutionary war his thoughts and ideas began to change. Culminating into his later views on the immorality it takes to own another person. While privately vocal about the matter, his public inability to potentially sacrifice the wellbeing of the newly established nation. As well as passing the Fugitive slave act, would inevitably lead to the continued enslavement of hundreds of thousands more African Americans.
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