Question

Why was slavery initially allowed in a democratic America?

Answer 1

• The federal government and individual prospectors, farmers, and hunters continually encroached upon native peoples, taking their land by force, destroying their cultures, and killing the majority through warfare, disease, and starvation.
• Slavery provided the essential fuel for capitalist development in the country. Northern financiers did not invest in cotton production because they felt good about it. They invested in cotton to make money from the toil of slaves.
• Democrats believed that the people were sovereign but unfortunately, only white people)and that the federal government could not take away their “right” to own slaves. Republicans believed that slaves were human beings whose rights were being taken away; there can be no “right” to own another human being.
• At the time, views were very different, but mostly because at the time, slavery was an integral part of the economy of many states, so banning slavery was unrealistic at the time. During the time America was founded, the states were still very individualistic, so there were a lot of compromises to keep them unified, slavery was one of those compromises.