This activity is part of Module 12: Slavery in America: From the Founding to America’s Second Founding from the Constitution 101 Curriculum
COLONIAL AMERICA
Slavery is obviously older than the U.S. Constitution. And slavery itself was written into colonial law as early as the 1660s in places like Virginia and the Carolinas.
By the 1700s, these colonial slave codes transformed slavery itself—making it inheritable. In other words, it was passed down from mother to child and was a lifelong condition based on race. This was known as “chattel slavery.” And this was a fundamental shift in how the institution of slavery worked. In the 1700s, American slavery expanded. To give just the example of Virginia—enslaved people grew from just 7% of the population in 1680 to 28% in 1700 and, finally, to a whopping 46% in 1750. So, slavery became a massive part of the Southern population—and white Southern wealth—in the 1700s.
With the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it also flew in the face of our nation’s founding principles.
Throughout the colonial period, slavery wasn’t only a Southern phenomenon. There were enslaved people in the North. However, during the 1780s, many Northern states took steps toward freeing enslaved people.
- Vermont ended slavery in their 1777 constitution.
- A state supreme court decision ended slavery in Massachusetts in 1783.
- Pennsylvania passed a gradual emancipation bill in 1780, followed by Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1784.
EARLY ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENTS
The anti-slavery movement was part of the American story from the very beginning.
- In January 1777, Prince Hall—a free African American in Boston—offered a petition for freedom to the Massachusetts House on behalf of seven African Americans. Like the Declaration of Independence, the petition offered a powerful vision of natural rights, arguing that the institution of slavery violates natural law. Massachusetts’s highest court would go on to declare slavery unconstitutional in 1783—answering Prince Hall’s prophetic call.
- During the 1780s, other Northern states took steps toward freeing enslaved people. Vermont ended slavery in their 1777 constitution. And Pennsylvania passed a gradual emancipation bill in 1780, followed by Rhode Isaland and Connecticut in 1784.
- Finally, consider Benjamin’s Franklin’s push to present an anti-slavery petition to the First Congress in 1790. Pennsylvania had the first abolition society in the country—founded in April 1775, called the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. The Quakers took a lead role in the society. A decade later, Benjamin Franklin was elected the society’s president. In his final public act, he sent a petition—signed in February 1790—to Congress on behalf of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, calling for the abolition of slavery and an end to the slave trade. The petition was introduced in the House and Senate shortly thereafter. Pro-slavery forces denounced the petition—and it sparked a heated debate in both the House and the Senate. The Senate took no further action on the petition, while the House sent it to a select committee. The House eventually tabled the resolution—putting it to the side—and argued that the Constitution limited Congress’s power to end the slave trade until 1808. This ended the debate on slavery in the First Congress. Franklin died two months later.
To further explore this topic, download the attached info brief!
