ipl-logo

The Constitution Failure

249 Words1 Pages
Our nation contemporarily hails the Constitution as a protector of the people’s rights — but we often fail to remember that it accomplished grand measures to secure the system of slavery. The year of 1787, when the Constitution was signed, was a year of great tension among members of American society. Vast numbers of people were in support of slavery, and many of its opposers were afraid to speak up about their beliefs. The Constitution attempted to retain a neutral position on the issue, but it ultimately failed by instituting safeguards against the freedom or equal recognition of slaves as members of America.
The Constitution’s first mistake was that it distinctly allowed the importation of slavery to continue; in fact, it expressly forbade
Show More
Related
550 Words | 3 Pages

The problems lied in the misinterpretation of the clauses that were present in the Constitution, that “was made by the people and for the people; and to the people, while also stating that, “the sovereign power in [the] confederacy, we appeal from this decision. They understand the charter of their liberties, we hope, full well enough to rebuke and defeat, at the polls, this effort to give the whole country up to the domination of the slave power.” This quote supports the political lens as the start of the Civil War because the Constitution is being referred to as an entity, and shows that slavery was a product of legal disputes and restrictions of protecting those who were not looked upon as valuable or human. Lastly, a drawback of this piece of evidence could be the writer is not a witness, nor a Judge of the Supreme Court, so he cannot recount all the factors that were taken into consideration during the

Read More
946 Words | 4 Pages

Never directly mentioned in the Constitution, and commonly refereed to as “others”, African Americans were often denied existence in the Constitutional Conventions. James Madison embodied the complacency of the average white American man. Ellis describes his thinking as “a kind of mysterious region where ideas entered going in one direction but then emerged headed the opposite way.” (114). The Southern founding fathers, Madison included, acknowledged the moral evils of the slave trade but many of them slave owners themselves, did not desire an end to it, admittedly for their own profit.

Read More
147 Words | 1 Pages

That statement is the beginning of how and why this country was created. In the case of states’ rights the Declaration of Independence did not matter, nor did the Supremacy Clause when it came to slavery. Only after a war and loss of many lives did we start to see how important it is to follow the Constitution. Great men on both sides argued for and against slavery, and in the end nothing matters. Believe it or not, today we still argue about how to get around the constitution.

Read More
645 Words | 3 Pages

After completing the process of the Constitutional Convention, I have learned an exceptional amount of information that can be used to take on the real world. During the convention there were many factors that impacted how the convention was run, and what choices were made. The preliminary discussion topics, the lessons learned, and the factions represented in the convention all modified the ending result. Each of the preliminary discussions with other factions prior to the convention were very important to the final decisions made. Slavery, a very important topic during the convention, was one such example that branched out into other different issues including slave trade and the abolishment of slavery.

Read More
400 Words | 2 Pages

Are “all men created equal”? Why did the Constitution allow slavery to continue? The framers of the Constitution allowed slavery to continue because of political, economic, and social issues. They wanted their nation to be unified and the number of states to stay intact. They wanted to secure wealth and slavery was a great part of their economy.

Read More
869 Words | 4 Pages

On September 2nd, 1862, Abraham Lincoln famously signed the Emancipation Proclamation. After that, there’s been much debate on whether Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation truly played a role in freeing the slaves with many arguments opposing or favoring this issue. In Vincent Harding’s essay, The Blood-red Ironies of God, Harding argues in his thesis that Lincoln did not help to emancipate the slaves but that rather the slaves “self-emancipated” themselves through the war. On the opposition, Allen C Guelzo ’s essay, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, argues in favor of the Emancipation Proclamation and Guelzo acknowledges Lincoln for the abolishment of slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation.

Read More
470 Words | 2 Pages

They feared that impoverished whites and blacks would deteriorate them, so their strategy consisted separating them through practices such as racial bribes, and abandonment on the reliance of indentured servants, effectively eliminating the risk of future alliances between poor whites and black slaves. The idea that the structure of the original Constitution, Articles of Confederation, was based on the effort to preserve slavery, while at the same time offer political and economic rights to whites is probable, based on Zinn’s

Read More
529 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the first half of the 19th century, people worked to better their lives and reform the flaws they saw in society. The 1800's were what the American people at the time called the "era of good feeling", but there were still many problems within American society. These problems or "social ills" later led to the Reform Movement which targeted such ills. Groups of individuals were solely created to be the driving forces of this movement. The Reform Movement has greatly impacted the United States history.

Read More
596 Words | 3 Pages

All people are created equal, and they deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is stated in the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution grants these rights to all human beings. In his editorial, “No Compromise With Slavery,” William Lloyd Garrison exposes that freedom and slavery contradict each other. Throughout the text, Garrison uses his passion for abolishing slavery to convince the readers that slavery is amoral and the work of the devil. Lloyd disputes that a country can stand for both freedom and slavery.

Read More
156 Words | 1 Pages

America was no longer a society with slaves, but especially in areas of the deep south, had become a slave society. Paternalistic value embedded in the deep south slave society culture was arguably the cherry on the cake of an unattainable compromise. Americans referred to the abolition of slavery as unconstitutional, necessary to life and permanent. This thought is expanded upon by David Wilmot as he argues, “I ask not that slavery be abolished. I demand that this Government preserve the integrity of free territory against the aggressions of slavery against its wrongful usurpations”

Read More
1106 Words | 5 Pages

The Constitution—the foundation of the American government—has been quintessential for the lives of the American people for over 200 years. Without this document America today would not have basic human rights, such as those stated in the Bill of Rights, which includes freedom of speech and religion. To some, the Constitution was an embodiment of the American Revolution, yet others believe that it was a betrayal of the Revolution. I personally believe that the Constitution did betray the Revolution because it did not live up to the ideals of the Revolution, and the views of the Anti-Federalists most closely embodied the “Spirit of ‘76.” During the midst of the American Revolution, authors and politicians of important documents, pamphlets, and slogans spread the basis for Revolutionary ideals and defined what is known as the “Spirit of ‘76”.

Read More
1324 Words | 6 Pages

Justice Thurgood Marshall Response Justice Thurgood Marshall said in his “Reflections on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution”, “I do not believe the meaning of the Constitution was forever ‘fixed’ at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, that we hold as fundamental as today” (Marshall). In this passage of his essay, Judge Marshall is critical of the government that is

Read More
918 Words | 4 Pages

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution created a pro-slavery

Read More
1367 Words | 6 Pages

However there is no doubt that there are still problems associated with it. It never explicitly addresses the rights of all the people including slaves, or of women. It’s problematic that the constitution is so highly regarded and followed even when these groups of people are left out, due to the fact that it divides the society by race and sex, and if you were apart of the persecution, it was because you were seen to be inferior, and should not have the same rights of white men. All throughout history we have become keenly familiar with some of the costs of this problem such as how african americans have been persecuted for generations even after the end of slavery. Women weren’t treated any better when you look at how they couldn’t vote until the 1930’s.

Read More
1074 Words | 5 Pages

Many people like to think that slavery started after this amendment, but they are completely wrong. Slavery has to be the biggest example of history repeating itself. It’s been practiced in almost every continent, and for some reason it’s still going. By definition slavery occurs when one person completely controls another person using violence or the threat of violence to maintain that control, exploits them economically, and they cannot walk away. According to reports, some 30 million people are currently slaves around the world.

Read More

More about The Constitution Failure

Related Topics

Open Document