9781422272701

maintain economic prosperity. Still, even slaveholders like Thomas Jefferson realized that slavery posed a conundrum as the colonies hurtled toward revolution and independence. In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson listed the African slave trade as one of the colonists’ grievances against the British Crown. However, this reference was removed from the final document in order to appease slaveholders, who did not wish to address the issue of slavery. The founding of the United States as an independent nation brought another opportunity for slavery to be discussed and addressed. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, some northern delegates wanted to see slavery abolished in the new Constitution. Again, however, delegates from the southern states decried the abolition of slavery as a blow to the agricultural economy on which their prosperity depended. The debate became one of representation in Congress, resulting in the Three-fifths Compromise . This compromise allowed for three-fifths of all slaves in a state to be counted toward representation in the House of Representatives. Another provision of the Constitution allowed Congress to ban the international slave trade, but only after a twenty-year period. The word “slavery” was never explicitly used in the original text of the Constitution. It would not be mentioned until the Thirteenth Amendment officially abolished s lavery in 1865. Over the next forty years, there were several attempts to control the spread of slavery in the growing United

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CONTEMPORARY ISSUES: REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY