Introduction
Slavery refers to a system that makes use of the property law principle and applies it to people. The principle permits individuals to buy, sell, and own other human beings. A slave gets deprived of most rights held by an ordinary human. Some of the rights derived from a slave is that of movement and liberty. A slave could not freely go from one place to the other since their freedom got handed to the one who purchased them. Despite many people advocating and wishing for slavery to get abolished, some of the people like the Virginia slaveholders stood to fight against slavery abolition. Their arguments got based on the fact that, firstly, God himself permitted slavery in the Old Testament bible; secondly, its abolishment would result in poverty, it would affect the economy and distress, and death among others, would befall the freed slaves. The analysis is mainly focused and limited to establishing the fight against slavery abolition in Virginia and determining how its abolition would have affected the 1787 constitution of the US.
To begin with, Slaveholders argued that when slavery got abolished, the economy would be negatively impacted (Schmidt & Wilhelm 136). It is so since the economy depended much on slave labor. For instance, the economy of tobacco would get affected. Also, the abolishing of slavery would mean unemployment to many slaves. As a result, chaos would accelerate, which would even involve bloodshed as they try to get something on their tables. "Rule of terror" was one of their basis which got issued during the revolution of the French resulted in mobs. Yet another argument was based on the bible where they pointed out that slavery was a norm to humans since it existed throughout history. The Romans, English, and the Greeks all had slaves since ago to present. Abraham got also said to have had many slaves. In the New Testament, however, Jesus remains silent even after having a world full of slavery (Giles 5).
Slavery defenders turned their focus also to courts whose ruling on the case of Dred Scott Decision stated that every black, not only slaves hold no legal standing as individuals in the court (Schmidt & Wilhelm 140). It symbolized that the slaves got taken as properties where the slaveholders’ rights got protected by the constitution. Freeing a slave to them was a way of saying one cares less of their well-being. They compared other nations such as Europe where poverty got seen to be high because the freed slaves got rendered helpless such that feeding or taking care of their needs becomes very hard.
In the making of the constitution back in 1787, some disputes arose on one of the three arms of government proposed i.e., the legislative arm (Einhorn 550). Those states that had a large number of people were demanding to get a representative who would represent the whole population. Whether to include slaves as being part of the population became the issue. Including them meant that high taxes were to get imposed on the southern states. Slavery thus affected the decision made in the constitution.
Conclusion
In conclusion, slavery is a practice that should not get abolished since it promotes rioting that emanates from unemployed individuals. The economy that depends entirely on the slave's labor would get affected, and the bible has a history of slaves like the case given above of Abraham. However, due to that argument, slavery should thus not be abolished since by keeping them hostage, one is helping them than freeing them.
