Get out a piece of paper and write down an answer to these questions. There is not necessarily any correct answers.
What is slavery?
https://www.britannica.com/topic/slavery-sociology
Why does slavery exist? Where does slavery exist?
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=447
Does slavery effect us today?
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "All men are created equal". This is the basic idea of freedom in our country. However, when it came to addressing the issue of slavery, the Constitution says nothing. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and even George Washington owned slaves. While that doesn't wipe out their contributions to the founding of the United States, it does make them somewhat complicated as humans. Today we will investigate what the framers said, and we will try to establish why they wouldn't include a decision to either protect or end slavery through the Constitution.
Your task is to read the attached PDF. It contains the words of some of the people involved in writing the Constitution. It also includes a few secondary sources, in which historians have weighed in.
Fill out the corresponding chart, and also see if you can figure out (on the first page) if the person "speaking" is a Federalist or an anti-Federalist.
This concept of Slavery in the early republic is also very complicated. To simply say that the framers were "one thing or the other" is not fair. Let's use Thomas Jefferson as a case study. Click on the link and follow the story that explains Thomas Jefferson's personal wrestling match with the concept of slavery, an institution that he hated and wanted to end, while he still benefitted from it. Thomas Jefferson and his struggle with what to do about slavery in the United States.
What did other framers says?
There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for this abolition of [slavery] but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, & that is by Legislative authority.
-George Washington, 1786