Activity
Anticipate: Defining Justice
Founding Principles
Virtues
Directions
- What does justice mean to you?
- Whose responsibility is it to be just?
- How can an injustice be changed or challenged?
In this lesson, you look at slavery as it existed in colonial Virginia. Specifically during the mid-to-late 1700s, before the United States was a country and was still a part of the British empire. As you analyze the primary sources, consider the definition of justice and its relationship to the law and to individual people.
Handout
Standards
More from this category
How did Benjamin Franklin action to abolish slavery in the early republic? Use his example to think about how students can promote justice for themselves and others.
Slavery: At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates were concerned with the survival of the young nation. Many delegates called for strong protections for slavery, while many others hated the idea of putting into the Constitution the idea that there could be property in people. With the goal of forming a Union, they reached a compromise. Slave states would count 3/5ths of their slave populations towards their state populations to calculate taxation and representation in Congress. This is known as the 3/5 Compromise. Additionally, Congress could not outlaw the international slave trade until 1808. The debate over the federal government's power to regulate slavery continued through the Civil War. James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson, who served as President of the United States in the years immediately before, during, and after the Civil War, each had different approaches to the constitutional powers of the President, if any, to interfere with the spread of slavery. At the end of the Civil War, the Reconstruction Amendments, the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, and 15th Amendment, were added to the US Constitution. The three amendments abolished slavery, granted citizenship regardless of race, and allowed Black men the right to vote.