The Role Of Slavery In Founding Brothers

As Joseph Ellis describes in his novel Founding Brothers, slavery was the most divisive problem in America. The states were divided not by their difference of size or but whether or not they had slaves. Instead of coming together and considering a compromise the North and the South each began to form the own arguments on the slave issue and began one of the biggest debates in the United States history.
The beginning of years of debates came on February 11,1790 when two quaker delegates presented a petition to the House asking for the federal government to to put an end to the African slave trade. No one saw this embarrassing act coming. The delegates interrupted a crucial debate over the assumption and residency questions with a request that
James Jackson questioned their patriotism, bringing up the fact that they sat out the recent war against British tyranny in difference to their cherished consciences. Though the subject of attack quickly changed from the delegates character flaws to the petition itself. The Southern states started to get defensive over their rights to own slaves and the northerners took the opportunity to support the petition and many realized their desire to get rid of slavery for good. William Smith led the southern states to debate using the constitution. They claimed that they would not have joined the union unless the part in the constitution stating that the federal government could do nothing to interfere with the existence of slavery in the South. They argued that the debate was a violation of that understanding. The southern states also argued that they relied on the slaves for their livelihood, without them they would have no one to work on their farms and they would not be able to sell and distribute the things that they had depended on for their entire
He said that silence was going to work against them. When the news reached the slaves and the found out that Congress was not going to help them they would lose all hope. Page warned the southerners that if the slaves lost hope then things would become very dangerous as nothing else would be more likely to cause them to revolt. The argument that slavery was inconsistent with the republican values that the American Revolution had been based on, came from the delegates of New England and most of the Middle Atlantic states. They wanted draw to a close the use of slaves and stop slavery from spreading to the west. The northerners kept fighting and came up with a plan to provide a national tax to compensate all of the slave owners. The southern stance in the debate was now representing more of the deep south. Their view was almost the complete opposite of the northern states. They insisted that they should have open access to import African slaves and they want no restrictions on being able to spread the use of slavery into the west. Jackson argued for the South that when the nation was founded in 1787 everyone had agreed on a compromise of their interests to help keep them all together. The Sectional Compromise granted a retention of the slave trade for twenty years. The Quakers request to break that contract would destroy the foundation on which the southern states entered the