What were some of the initial arguments made for the prohibition of slavery in spite of the ban on Congressional discussion until 1808?

Answer 1

1) There were many argument made against slavery in spite of the agreement made that it could not be banned until 1808. Some of these points of view were:

· Slavery and the slave trade went directly against the ideals that the American people had fought for in the American Revolution, the idea that every man is equal and born with human rights as described by the enlightenment philosophers (with some exceptions, such as john Locke saying that it important to own property, including slaves, in order to be free).

· It was considered to be against many religions, including most Protestants. Since the Second Great Awakening, the churches (especially in the North and Upper South) had been saying that slavery was unjust and against what The Bible said was right in the eyes of God.

· Quakers, believing for the entire history of their religion, began to question the problems with the institution of slavery, not only the religious ones, but the cultural problems with it, seeing that the Americans had just fought a war against oppressive and people who thought they owned all the Americans and now the Americans were doing the same to their own people.

For the first time in the new nation, people were getting large amounts of attention while questioning slavery and its premise that blacks were inferior to whites when the country was founded on the ideals "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (from the Declaration of Independence). These arguments were briefly put to the side because of the agreement made in the Constitutional Convention that they would not outlaw the institution of slavery or the slave trade nationally at least until twenty years after the convention (1808).