Town Hall Reaction

At today's town hall meeting I heard a lot of compelling arguments from both anti-slavery abolitionists and pro-slavery slaveholders and politions. A lot of people on the anti-slavery side were activists, authors and leaders of the abolitionist movement and they had a lot of powerful arguments to share. On the other end were pro-slavery presidents, founding fathers and wealthy plantation owners. 

One of the activists we heard from was Harriet Beecher Stowe who is a famous author and activist who travels around the world with her books and speeches sharing her beliefs. She wrote the famous book Uncle Tom's Cabin which was a fictional story that showed the true horrors of slavery. Her main argument against slavery was that it is inhumane and that slaves should be treated as equals. This made me look at the issue of slavery in a different way because before I never really saw my slaves as human. 

A popular argument on the anti-slavery side was the bible. In the bible God sees every human as equal and that we should not “own” other humans. This is why a lot of religious activists believe that slavery is against God's word and what the bible stands for. There were also counter arguments of this on the pro-slavery side because as some of the pro-slavery people found there are plenty of bible quotes that are in support of slavery. So overall I think the religious argument isn't very effective because there are bible verses that can argue both sides of the slavery argument. 

A popular pro-slavery argument is that it is the base of the economy here in the south. A lot of politicians, and plantation owners have become rich off of slavery so of course they are in favor of it. A lot of people on the pro-slavery argument defended slavery because they think that the south needs it in order to keep the economy up.

After hearing all of the arguments I think the anti-slavery side had more compelling and convincing arguments. So I think that the anti-slavery side won the debate and we should abolish slavery in our country.