I would imagine that most of us who teach Virginia history have read Henry Wiencek's book on Washington.  I've read it--indeed, I've taught it.  But even to the extent that men like Washington, Mason, Jefferson, and so on acknowledged the evil of slavery--and he is quite right that they did--they also knew well that their constituents would not follow them on the issue.  

I disagree that the Founding was determined solely on matters of interest.  Yes, in the heat of argument, and when it served his purposes, Rutledge said so.  But its simply ludicrous to suggest that Madison, Mason, Wilson, Sherman, Livingston, Dickenson, Ellsworth, and so on spent all that time arguing solely over matters of economic interest.  There was quite a bit of principled debate going on in the convention--but when it came to slavery, they were willing to compromise along lines of economic interest.  That fact right there tells us something important about how those men prioritized the morality of slavery.  While many of them, including some southerners and some slave owners, agreed that slavery was wrong, too many of them also agreed with Patrick Henry, for whom "convenience" overwhelmed conviction.

As a matter of political calculation, the Founders knew that they not only had to craft a constitution, they also had to produce a frame of government that had some potential to be ratified by their constituents.  And when we look at the statements of the people who ratified the Constitution, its quite clear where they stood on the matter.  Kaminski argues that by 1787, whatever window had earlier existed to abolish slavery was firmly shut--and in my view he is correct.  

I agree very much that we should be critical of those men--like George Mason or Thomas Jefferson--who acknowledged the evil of slavery and nonetheless did nothing about it.  

But to some degree that is the easy part.  Much more difficult is to ask ourselves, "what would have to be true about the society in which I live, that *I* might behave as Patrick Henry behaved?"  What has to be so, about the world in which I live, that *I* might be complicit in evil?  Acknowledging evil, and then failing to confront it, is a rather human thing to do.  The harder task in front of us, it seems to me, is to understand the humanity--the essential "like me-ness"--of men like Rutledge, or Pinckney.  And, in as much as *those* men were far more typical of the enfranchised men of the south who exercised citizenship in the period, in understanding the Rutledges and Pinckneys, we come close to understanding the society in which most slaves lived their lives.
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University