Description

Explain how most Colonial Americans (1492-1750) believed that slavery was normal, necessary, and perhaps even just. Why were Revolutionary Americans (1750-1815) among the first people in the world to condemn slavery, and still were unable to completely destroy it? Among Jacksonian Americans (1815-1865), why did a few people denounce slavery as sin, others come to see it as posing a threat to their own freedom, and still others be willing to fight to preserve it? Why was the rise and fall of slavery a central theme in early American history?