The Law of American Slavery –Kermit Hall
Source: Excerpt from The Law of American Slavery, a book written by historian Kermit Hall and published in 1987. Slavery.... hung over the Philadelphia Convention, threatening to divide northern and southern delegates.... Even though slavery existed by law in some of the northern states in 1787, the sentiment there favored its end. Southerners were a good deal more ambivalent, both because they had significantly greater numbers of slaves to deal with and because an end to the peculiar institution had important economic implications....The result was compromise.... The framers were more determined to fashion a new nation than they were to bring an end to slavery.
Question:
1. According to Hall, why didn’t the authors of the Constitution abolish slavery?
