A Missed Opportunity? The Founding, Postcolonial Realities, and the Abolition of Slavery

Abstract

Historians who lament the United States' founding era as a missed opportunity to abolish slavery assert rather than probe the assumptions lying behind the idea that this was an avoidable failure. This article analyzes what was possible for the Founding generation in light of the stubborn social, economic, and political realities militating against sweeping emancipation in the Southern states. Those realities severely limit the usefulness of an inordinately tight focus on what this or that Founder or group of Founders failed to do to achieve abolition in the new nation.