"Fred the Red Shirt" wrote in message
...
Immediately after the Revolutionary war several colonies
abolished slavery, others, like Virginia came close. So
slavery was not, by any means, a generally accepted
practice at the birth of the US.

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FF


I would also suggest that slavery was the most divisive issue facing the
nation from inception to the civil war. Debates in congress would fill
volumes, as the country expanded the free state Vs slave state designations
dominated political discourse. Regrettably the original inclusion was
politically necessary to ensure a united country for the revolution, without
the limited acceptance the war would have failed or not happened at all.
That abolishment eventually required such a bloody civil war attests to the
ultimate difficulty. But clearly the moral direction of the country as a
whole from 1776 onward put slavery on a ever more slippery slope to
extinction. Rod