Pro and Anti-Slavery People in History Presentations

    I learned many things throughout the presentation of the pro and anti slavery representatives. One thing I learned was that Abraham Lincoln was both Pro-slavery and Anti-slavery in his life time. He began saying things that would resemble pro-slavery comments in public, but it seems that he said most of these things so he would gain popularity and when he was elected was when he used his power as president to create real change in the government. I learned that there were men on both sides like Thomas Jefferson as well who was persuaded by a friend of his to enlighten himself and begin fighting for the anti-slavery movement because he wrote that all men were created equal, but he owned many slaves and heavily profited from them. He changed his mind and freed his slaves. People change throughout life and it is happened many time in history. I also learned of people who's minds were changed for the worse like John C. Calhoun who went into college a political moderate, but would later go on to say that African Americans would have to be the exploited class because the government could not afford to run a country without them. There were also men like James Henry Hammond who had his thoughts for a much longer time and never changed throughout his life. He said that slavery gave African American people purpose and that was why they couldn't free all the slaves. He made it seem like an African American couldn't dot anything other than serve. There were many arguments made from ethics, morality, religion, economics, and even law. The weakest of these would be religion because there are many religions some of which have no problem with slavery or which contradict themselves when talking about the topic. The strongest would be law because law cannot be overlooked. It is law. People like Sojourner Truth who argued from religion which even thought it is the correct thing to do was a very weak argument if it were to be taken to a court. There were also people like David Wilmot who argued with the law making his argument strong.

    Overall, the main thing to learn from the presentations was that there was a lot of people fighting on both sides of this slavery battle and no matter what is said some people will not change their views, some will and some will remain confused. People need to have conversations about topics that are of importance otherwise there will never be an end to the conflict. There needs to be discussion between people about issues because only people can resolve great conflict between each other.