Exceptional Leadership by Fairholm Gilbert W.;

Author:Fairholm, Gilbert W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Prohibition of Slavery

The founding leaders used the Northwest Ordinance as a vehicle to move forward moral arguments against slavery although they didn’t—or couldn’t—resolve it completely. The Ordinance prohibits slavery in the territory, but it did not free the slaves already held by settlers there. Efforts in the 1820s by pro-slavery forces to legalize slavery in the territory failed. A compromise “indentured servant” law did pass allowing some slaveholders to bring slaves under that status. However, slaves could not be bought or sold (Brion, Mintz, and Mintz, 2000, p. 234; Finkelman,1989, p. 21) in the territory. Southern states voted for the law because they did not want to compete with the territory over tobacco as a commodity crop—it was so labor intensive that it was grown profitably only with slave labor. The balance of the number of free versus slave states was not affected, as most slave states in 1790 were south of the Ohio River. Article VI required residents to return fugitive slaves to their owners. This provided slave owners with previously unprecedented federal support (Finkelman, 1986, p. 345). Nevertheless, leaders formally introduced discussion of the expansion of slavery into the debate and strongly voiced their objections to it.

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