LogFAQs > #942310219

CommonJoe posted...

Its also good to remember that in the context of the revolution slavery eas being looked at in a similar vein to how we view gay rights or drug legalization.

The moral arguments then and now are there, but you're talking about uprooting norms that have existed for decades, if not centuries. And at least during the Revolution, Southern slavery hadn't yet started to decline, so you couldn't make the "unviable to continue" argument that could have a century afterwords if you were to ask if slavery would have really continued if the South won. It wouldnt have as the industrial revolution would have rendered it largely obsolete.

So were the Founders cowards regarding slavery? No, but thats like saying refusing to be a total paragon of virtue is cowardice, and in any age thats simply unrealistic.

Well, there is an argument to be made that slavery as an institution was gradually on it's way out, which may have been why the founder felt setting the issue aside for later was a viable option, until the cotton gin was invented. That caused a significant boom in the southern cotton plantation economy, which would've increased demand for slave labor and prolonged the practice longer than may have been foreseen in 1776.