Are All Men Created Equal?

The Declaration of Independence finds it a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Yet all men are not equal. In fact, many of the signers of the document owned slaves even as they agreed to the proposition of equality. This has become one of the great controversies in American politics and culture. The Founding Fathers are accused of hypocrisy for not freeing the slaves outright in the Constitution, and of being racist for counting slaves as only three-fifths of a person. Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice on the United States Supreme Court, considered the Constitution to be one of the worst documents ever written, yet it was only because of that Constitution and the fundamental proposition of equality that he was able to become a justice on the highest court in the land.

Obviously all men are not born equal. Some are born to wealth and luxury while others are born to poverty. Some are born in good health, some are not. Certainly Jefferson and the signers understood that. The proposition was that God endowed them "with certain unalienable rights." It was to these God-given rights that all men are created equal. Those rights include, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." So why, if all men deserve these rights equally, did Washington and Jefferson still own slaves? Why was slavery not abolished in the beginning?

The answer is found in an understanding of our history. Washington inherited his slaves, he treated them well, and never sold a slave if it would break up a family, and both men freed their slaves in their wills when they died. They could do no better because a Virginia law at the time prohibited the freeing of slaves in Virginia. They were stuck with their slaves until they died.

Slavery was brought to America's shores not by the colonists, but by the British Crown. The Founding Fathers blamed the king for introducing and forcing the institution on them. By the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the institution had become so ingrained in southern life that slave owners argued that it had become a necessity. The cotton industry had become so dependent on slaves that it could not be changed overnight with the stroke of a pen. Instead the Founders left it alone in order to unite all the colonies under one government, but put a moratorium on the African slave trade for twenty years believing that by that time the slave institution would be dying out on its own. They left it up to the individual states to end the practice when they felt ready, but they went on to prohibit slavery in the Northwest Territories.

The Northern States, where cotton and tobacco do not grow, were the first to outlaw slavery. The Southern States were expected to take a little longer, but then in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. His machine revolutionized the separating of seeds and dirt from the cotton and suddenly made slave labor a greater necessity than ever before. As cotton became king, slave owners, in order to justify themselves, began to view ownership as a moral right, even using Scripture to defend their position, and it was here that the nation began its slippery slide toward the "Irrepressible Conflict."

But what about slaves being considered as only three-fifths of a person? Again the answer is found in understanding the purpose of that arrangement. Fully a third of the population of the Southern States were slaves. Slaves were not citizens, yet southerners wanted to count every slave in the census as a citizen for the apportionment of congressional seats. The more slaves they could count the more voting power they would gain in Congress. The Northern States objected but agreed to the three-fifths rule as a compromise to give the southerners some votes, but to prevent them from getting all the votes they could if slaves were counted as a whole number. In the end this was not a racist decision declaring black people inferior, but a compromise designed to lessen the pro-slavery voting block and bring a quicker end to the practice.

By 1860 the issue had become slavery in the western territories. The Republican Party, with Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for president said,"No." Slavery could not be allowed to spread, although it would not be interfered with where it already existed. This was unsatisfactory to the people of the South and what followed was the bloodiest war in American history.

The argument today is that the war was not over slavery, but over State's Rights. The problem with that argument is that the only right that the states could not reconcile through ordinary legislative means was the right to slavery. In the last weeks of 1860, Southerners led by William Yancey and a group of 52 men calling themselves "Secession Commissioners," stirred up the South to fight for the very right of owning slaves. In the end over 660,000 men died, around 400,000 of them from the North fighting to preserve the Union which resulted in the destruction of the institution of slavery.

Blacks and other minorities were still not treated equal in many parts of the country, but the Civil Rights Act of 1964 put an end to Jim Crow laws and segregation. As a nation we have bent over backward in the last fifty years to ensure equality for all people. And now, in spite of his playing the race card when he announced his candidacy, we have even elected a black president.

America is not perfect because, in spite of our Christian heritage, we are a nation governed by men and women. We are flawed and imperfect. Our history proves it. Our present government really proves it. Yet in the history of the world there has never been a nation like the United States of America. Lincoln said, "Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men.... Ours began by affirming those rights." There is not a nation in the world where the people are as free and equal as the people of the United States.