Are the concessions made by the Founding Fathers morally reprehensible?

[SpoilerVirgin]

I am a feminist, and sometimes I want to cry when I hear about the terrible conditions for women in some parts of the world. I try to think about ways I could help (quit my job and go over to the Middle East and…do what? Send large amounts of money…to whom?). Ultimately I do feel like I fail morally in some way by allowing the oppression of women to continue.

With hindsight, it’s easy to see other paths the Founding Fathers might have taken. But at the time, they didn’t even know if their little revolution would be a success. They were busy enough trying to fight the British and getting all of the states to agree on anything. They knew that slavery was a moral problem, and that the time would come when it would have to be addressed.

@Thomas Jefferson

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other…Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@HoneyBadgerDC

I have battled with this one since childhood. It is hard for me to see the founding fathers as evil yet it would be hard to deny the evil nature of slavery, they had to be aware it was immoral.

Sure, it’s hard for us, with our perspective, to deny the evil nature of slavery. Would it still be so obvious to you if you had grown up never knowing, personally or by reputation, any black people except those who had lived their lives as slaves and lacked even the rudiments of education or experience of free life? and in a society in which it was taken for granted that, as your grandmother believed, “blacks were a different human species”?

[Voyager]

@Miller

Seems unlikely. The number of slaves escaping to the north would have been a relatively small trickle, and there’s no guarantee that the north would accept them.

Far more likely would be at least one war over western expansion. Probably more than one, particularly once they find gold in California.

The number of escaped slaves might increase if they knew they would not be returned. But in any case I definitely agree with you about the impact of western expansion.

[Voyager]

@mhendo

Had the United States as we know it not come together, and had there been two separate nations (slave and free soil) instead, we can’t really know how the historical developments that we now call “westward expansion” would have played out.

Would Spain still have retroceded Louisiana to the French, if they weren’t worried about dealing with a single, expansionist United States? If they did, would the French have sold it to the free soil American nation, or to the slave American nation, or to no-one at all?

Would either the free soil nation or the slave nation have been as expansionist as the United States was in the era of James Polk? If they were, would either one have been belligerent enough and powerful enough to prod Mexico into a war, and defeat Mexico in order to take over the lands that Mexico ceded to the US under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo? What would have happened in the tug-of-war over the Oregon Territory? Would there still have been a “Fifty-four forty or fight” campaign, in either American nation?

It certainly would have played out differently, but do you think that either France or Spain would have been able to protect what became the Louisiana Purchase from the inevitable western expansion from one or several counties? The Mexicans couldn’t keep Americans out of Texas and they were right there. It seems possible that competition with the other American state would have made each more aggressive.
It is not clear that what did happen was the worst possible outcome.

[iiandyiiii]

@Thudlow_Boink

Sure, it’s hard for us, with our perspective, to deny the evil nature of slavery. Would it still be so obvious to you if you had grown up never knowing, personally or by reputation, any black people except those who had lived their lives as slaves and lacked even the rudiments of education or experience of free life? and in a society in which it was taken for granted that, as your grandmother believed, “blacks were a different human species”?

All of us probably hope we would be like John Adams and his family, but chances are most of us wouldn’t meet that high a bar. It still doesn’t excuse the actions of those who supported slavery, and especially those who treated any slaves (or anyone at all) with brutality. This includes Washington, who (IIRC) sent bounty hunters after some escaped slaves.

[mhendo]

@Voyager

It certainly would have played out differently, but do you think that either France or Spain would have been able to protect what became the Louisiana Purchase from the inevitable western expansion from one or several counties?

Probably not, although in my opinion using the word “inevitable” when talking about history is, in itself, a very problematic thing to do. Historical change occurs through myriad contingencies and decisions and strategies and paths taken and not taken. Very little is inevitable, even if it appears that way in hindsight once it’s happened.

My point is simply that the whole battle over the west would have looked very different, and would possibly have had far more players than it did.

If neither of the new American nations had purchased Louisiana from France, for example, how would expansion have worked? Would both simply have begun to spread over French territory? Would one have sided with the French in order to gain an advantage over the other? If the French refused to sell, then the Americans (one or both nations) might have ended up with Louisiana anyway, but it would have been a longer and slower and more conflict-ridden process, which would, in turn, have shaped relationships in the continent as a whole.

What role would Britain have played, not just in the Oregon Territory, but in the more general disputes?

@Voyager

The Mexicans couldn’t keep Americans out of Texas and they were right there.

They didn’t actually try to keep them out. Empresarios like Austin were actually invited in, given land, and authorized to bring settlers, partly in an attempt to act as a sort of buffer against unchecked American immigration. The battle over Texas occurred not because Americans came in uninvited, but because the Americans who were invited in refused to comply with the conditions and expectations of the Mexican government. They refused to convert to Catholicism, they didn’t learn Spanish, many of them held Mexicans in contempt, and they brought slaves while, in some cases, presenting bogus indenture contracts in order to claim that they weren’t slaves at all.

@Voyager

It seems possible that competition with the other American state would have made each more aggressive.
It is not clear that what did happen was the worst possible outcome.

Again, that’s entirely possible. I have not made the argument that what happened was the worst possible outcome. I’m not even arguing in terms of “worst” or “better” or “best” here, because i think that’s also a rather problematic way to try to understand and evaluate historical change. Worst for whom? Better for whom? Best for whom?

[Miller]

@mhendo

But who is “they”?

You know. Those guys.

[Der_Trihs]

@Thudlow_Boink

Sure, it’s hard for us, with our perspective, to deny the evil nature of slavery.

It was also hard for them, which is why the slaveowners tied themselves up in psychological knots trying to excuse it. They weren’t primitive barbarians who just didn’t know better, nor were they ancient Romans who simply took a “might makes right” attitude and that was that. No; they knew on some level that what they were doing was wrong by their own standards, they were people who claimed that “all men are created equal” and then owned slaves. They were just in denial about it.

Hypocrisy isn’t a modern invention. Nor is people deluding themselves in order to avoid admitting that they are hypocritical.

[Voyager]

@mhendo

P I have not made the argument that what happened was the worst possible outcome. I’m not even arguing in terms of “worst” or “better” or “best” here, because i think that’s also a rather problematic way to try to understand and evaluate historical change. Worst for whom? Better for whom? Best for whom?

That wasn’t you, that was more DerTrihs whose comment I originally replied to.
The Founders compromising on slavery led to the Civil War - if they hadn’t compromised it might have led to something else even worse.
I’m hardly claiming that anything would have been inevitable. Hard to do when we don’t know what the structure of the governments would have been, their standing on immigration (which increased the population of the north) industrialization, etc, etc etc. Could be a cool Alternate History series, though.

[Voyager]

This discussion leads me to wonder if there was a better solution. From our perspective outlawing slavery would have been best, but that wasn’t really politically or economically feasible.
I wonder if reducing the voting value of a slave would have eventually led to a more Northern oriented House - though not Senate. Perhaps there could have been a Southern Gorbachev who saw the handwriting on the wall.

[XT]

Are the concessions made by the Founding Fathers morally reprehensible?

I guess ultimately it’s going to depend on whether you think that having a US of A come into existence at all has been a net positive or a net negative. Because, contrary to what seems to be the popular opinion here, had the FF’s not made the compromises they did there would have BEEN no US of A. There wouldn’t have been two nations arising out of the revolution, one free and one slave, the revolution itself would have failed completely and the Brits would have remained in charge. Which would have meant that instead of a contiguous US spanning the continent with one vicious civil war, instead we would have had the standard European colonial squabbles between each of the various European powers on the continent bringing their fighting here. And there would STILL have been slavery for at least as long as it turned out to be in actual history…IMHO, probably longer, as I’m not sure the Brits would have felt the same about anti-slavery as they did historically if they had so much more of a stake in it by retaining their US southern territories. THEY would have probably had to make more concessions and compromises as well.

I think that Human Action has the right of it:

Certainly, the Founding Fathers who personally owned slaves have no excuse for that conduct. I was referring only to the political compromises, items in the Constitution that protected slavery. The political compromise is defensible, in my view, since there was no alternative in which all slaves would have been freed. The personal choice to own slaves was not defensible, even if some were freed by some Founding Fathers.

From an individual standpoint, those FF’s who retained slaves were, especially in retrospect, ‘morally reprehensible’. But the concessions and compromises they made? They were the only thing that allowed the US of A to ever exist at all. Even WITH the compromises and concessions to slave owners it was a near run thing. Without them? No way the revolution have succeeded in the first place.

[mhendo]

@xt

I guess ultimately it’s going to depend on whether you think that having a US of A come into existence at all has been a net positive or a net negative. Because, contrary to what seems to be the popular opinion here, had the FF’s not made the compromises they did there would have BEEN no US of A. There wouldn’t have been two nations arising out of the revolution, one free and one slave, the revolution itself would have failed completely and the Brits would have remained in charge.

Huh?

Many of the most significant compromises over the issue of slavery, particularly as they pertained to the Constitution and the composition of the United States, happened once the war for independence was already won and the Treaty of Paris had been signed.

The Articles of Confederation didn’t deal with the slavery issue at all, and the Continental Congress was too busy trying to raise money and fight the war to debate over the question of how slaves would be dealt with in the event of victory.

Of course, had the framers of the Constitution not made, for example, the three-fifths compromise, or had they tried to ban slavery altogether, then it’s entirely possible that the Constitution would not have been ratified by the 9 states necessary for adoption, and there would indeed have been no United States. And if the framers had not been able to reach an agreement at all in Philadelphia, then obviously there would have been no United States.

But, despite the perils of counterfactual history, it is quite possible to imagine a scenario whereby the 13 states came together as they did to fight and win the Revolutionary war, and then fell out in some way or another over the issue of slavery, and created two independent nations.

[XT]

@mhendo

Huh?

Many of the most significant compromises over the issue of slavery, particularly as they pertained to the Constitution and the composition of the United States, happened once the war for independence was already won and the Treaty of Paris had been signed.

The Articles of Confederation didn’t deal with the slavery issue at all, and the Continental Congress was too busy trying to raise money and fight the war to debate over the question of how slaves would be dealt with in the event of victory.

Of course, had the framers of the Constitution not made, for example, the three-fifths compromise, or had they tried to ban slavery altogether, then it’s entirely possible that the Constitution would not have been ratified by the 9 states necessary for adoption, and there would indeed have been no United States. And if the framers had not been able to reach an agreement at all in Philadelphia, then obviously there would have been no United States.

But, despite the perils of counterfactual history, it is quite possible to imagine a scenario whereby the 13 states came together as they did to fight and win the Revolutionary war, and then fell out in some way or another over the issue of slavery, and created two independent nations.

I suppose if you want to posit that everyone would have left the question of slavery up in the air until after the fighting, and THEN they would deal with it, then it’s possible to envision the Revolution happening pretty much as it happened and then 2 different political states emerging in the aftermath, but I don’t believe that’s what would have happened. Without the tacit agreement from the majority of the early leaders that slavery was at least on the table I don’t believe any sort of victory was possible. The southern states certainly wouldn’t have gone along with the fighting part if they felt that, having won the war they would either be deprived of their rights to owning slaves or they would have had to fight a second war to establish their own nation…and that’s what would have happened if the Founding Fathers took a modern, moral stance on this from the beginning. Hell, I seriously doubt if people like George Washington would have fought for the Revolution at all, and he was the right guy at the right time in the right place.

The thing is, once you start changing history it’s hard to say where things will go…but you can almost guarantee that they wouldn’t have gone anything like how it actually played out.

[mhendo]

@xt

I suppose if you want to posit that everyone would have left the question of slavery up in the air until after the fighting, and THEN they would deal with it, then it’s possible to envision the Revolution happening pretty much as it happened and then 2 different political states emerging in the aftermath, but I don’t believe that’s what would have happened. Without the tacit agreement from the majority of the early leaders that slavery was at least on the table I don’t believe any sort of victory was possible. The southern states certainly wouldn’t have gone along with the fighting part if they felt that, having won the war they would either be deprived of their rights to owning slaves or they would have had to fight a second war to establish their own nation…and that’s what would have happened if the Founding Fathers took a modern, moral stance on this from the beginning. Hell, I seriously doubt if people like George Washington would have fought for the Revolution at all, and he was the right guy at the right time in the right place.

The thing is, once you start changing history it’s hard to say where things will go…but you can almost guarantee that they wouldn’t have gone anything like how it actually played out.

The problem is, though, that many of the most significant intellectual debates over slavery in the early Republic can be traced quite clearly to Revolutionary ideology itself. The expanding Enlightenment-era notions of liberty and natural rights that were so significant in the Revolution began, at the same time, to cause more and more people to make pointed comparisons between the rhetoric of liberty and the reality of slavery.

The debate over slavery, and challenges to slavery such as judicial abolition in Massachusetts (1783) and gradual abolition in other northern states, were, in many important ways, a product of the Revolution itself. This is not to say that anti-slavery sentiment was completely absent before that; only that the dramatically expanded language of liberty and natural equality and rights that were so significant during the Revolution created an atmosphere in which opposition to human bondage could thrive, at least (and especially) in those places where slaves were not central to the system of economic production.

I think you’re right that many southerners might not have gone along with the fighting if they had thought they would lose their slaves. But the fact is that an atmosphere in which anti-slavery sentiment became large enough to notice in America didn’t emerge until the revolution was actually underway. Similarly, if George Washington didn’t consider emancipation to be a possibility, it’s not because he was explicitly assured of this before the Revolution, but because the issue of emancipation wasn’t really discussed very much in the pre-Revolutionary era, and only really became a live one in America as Revolutionary calls for liberty turned people’s minds to such issues far more forcefully than ever before.

[tim-n-va]

If you have a farm and decide to free your slaves and hire workers to replace them and your neighbors don’t follow suit, you will soon price yourself out of business. It is very possible to think slavery is wrong but being personally poor is worse.

[PhillyGuy]

@mhendo

I teach United States history to college students, and while i understand the inclination to make clear-cut moral judgments about historical figures like the framers of the Constitution, i think it’s historically more productive to understand them and their decisions, rather than simply debating whether or not those decisions were “morally reprehensible.”

I certainly agree with this in teaching history – and in writing history.

Of course, in the context of boards like this, it isn’t happening. And given all the bloviating about the greatness of the founders, and the need to replace the bad constitution they gave us, knocking them down seems fine to me.

The American Revolution had a lot to do with being able to freely grab land west of the alleghenies, generally reserved to native Americans by the British Proclamation Line of 1763. Our richest president, George Washington, was a large holder of disputed land.

It wasn’t as clear-cut that victory for the Americans was bad for the slaves as it was clear-cut that it was bad for natives. But the fact that Britain had freed its slaves in 1772 did give a hint as to which side was better for people of color.

Not all the revolutionaries were morally reprehensible. Some were decent patriots who saw what way their polity was going and took the side that would, in the long run, give them the most influence. And there were some legitimate grips against the British than would have taken a while to resolve peacefully. But don’t think that the good guys won.

[Farin]

@Miller

That’s not what hypocrisy means.

If you say one thing and do another? That’s exactly what hypocrisy means. Yesterday, you were hanging anti-gay posters. Today, you are saying the gays are cool fellows. To any outside observer (especially those that hinged their statements as for or against your own), you are being a hypocrite.

No one but you can know about the midnight epiphany, and no one will give credence to what you say, again. You were hypocritical. The best you can hope for is that some will believe you are “just” a turn coat.

You as a generic debate device, not you personally, mr moderator.

[clairobscur]

@Der_Trihs

It was also hard for them, which is why the slaveowners tied themselves up in psychological knots trying to excuse it. They weren’t primitive barbarians who just didn’t know better, nor were they ancient Romans who simply took a “might makes right” attitude and that was that. No; they knew on some level that what they were doing was wrong by their own standards, they were people who claimed that “all men are created equal” and then owned slaves.

Reading what Washington wrote about Blacks shows that he didn’t believe they were “naturally equal”. They were mentally inferior to Whites in his mind.

With such a view, you can’t expect Blacks to ever be fully equal. If you grant them equal rights, you’ll perceive it as an artificial decision, consistent with principles, but not adapted to the reality of black people’s limitations.

So, you’re unable to provide a completely sensible solution. If on top of that sticking with the principles leads to a number of significant issues, possibly even endangering the country, it’s really easy to see why you’ll kick the ball to be picked up by future generations. Especially since from a pragmactical point of view, slavery is relatively well adapted to the respective abilities and needs of the two races, both generally speaking benefiting from the situation.

So, I don’t think it’s going to be a really difficult moral dilemna. There’s nothing seriously wrong with maintening slavery until a better approach is found and practical.

[clairobscur]

@Voyager

This discussion leads me to wonder if there was a better solution. From our perspective outlawing slavery would have been best, but that wasn’t really politically or economically feasible.

I’ll grant you the “not politically feasible”, but it certainly would have been economically feasible.

[mhendo]

@clairobscur

So, I don’t think it’s going to be a really difficult moral dilemna. There’s nothing seriously wrong with maintening slavery until a better approach is found and practical.

I’m a little confused. Are you musing here about what Washington might have thought, or are you arguing, yourself, that there was nothing seriously wrong with maintaining slavery in that situation?

If the latter, do you believe that an evaluation of the rightness or wrongness of slavery should be based on whether or not there is a more practical economic and social system?