Apparently you are wrong. I said that slavery did not have to be legal in the U.S. and it didn't. The inability is on you. The choice of slavery was made by each colonial state before the declaration and it did not have to happen. And don't give me that bullshit about judging the past by the present.
Here's why:
The record shows how the people of that time assessed “today's” standards on themselves. Almost every one of them spoke out against slavery. Ben Franklin and Ben Rush formed an abolition organization. John Quincy Adams was called the “hell hound for Abolition.” Don’t believe me, here are their words.
“Why keep alive the question of slavery? It is admitted by all to be a great evil.”
Charles Carroll, Signer of the Declaration
“I am glad to hear that the disposition against keeping negroes grows more general in North America. Several pieces have been lately printed here against the practice, and I hope in time it will be taken into consideration and suppressed by the legislature.”
Benjamin Franklin, Signer of the Declaration, Signer of the Constitution, President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society
“That men should pray and fight for their own freedom and yet keep others in slavery is certainly acting a very inconsistent, as well as unjust and perhaps impious,”
John Jay, President of Continental Congress, Original Chief Justice U. S. Supreme Court
“Justice and humanity require it [the end of slavery]–Christianity commands it. Let every benevolent . . . pray for the glorious period when the last slave who fights for freedom shall be restored to the possession of that inestimable right.
Noah Webster, Responsible for Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution
I hope we shall at last, and if it so please God I hope it may be during my life time, see this cursed thing [slavery] taken out. . . . For my part, whether in a public station or a private capacity, I shall always be prompt to contribute my assistance towards effecting so desirable an event.”
William Livingston, Signer of the Constitution; Governor of New Jersey
“The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. . . . And with what execration [curse] should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other. . . . And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson talked a good game. His rhetoric opposing slavery was soaring and majestic, but Jefferson froze up when it came to action. Many of our heralded founding fathers enslaved people. Sixty-four men are credited with the “founding” of America. Out of the 64 so-called founders, 49 owned slaves. The slave owners were:
George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, James Monroe, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, Samuel Chase, John Hancock, Benjamin Harrison, John Dickinson, William Floyd, George Mason, Joseph Hewes, John Penn, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, George Taylor, Caesar Rodney, George Read, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark, Josiah Bartlett, William Hooper, William Whipple, Stephen Hopkins , and Oliver Wolcott.
And they all were not from the south. I'm not the one making excuses for this crap. YOU GROW UP. Because it did not have to happen. These are the same motherfuckers who decided to snap their fingers to declare themselves free from Britain. So you simply have no defense for this that I am going to accept.