It was left to the people and the states to decide. That was the original position of the Founders and the Constitution. The "enumeration clause" of the Constitution did, however, provide an incentive for the people and the states to choose to end slavery. States that allowed slavery were only allowed to count 60% of their slaves toward their allotment of representatives. States without slaves were entitled to count 100% of their populations toward representation. But the Federal Government did not impose a one-size-fits-all solution to the slavery issue. The Constitution left it to American society to figure out how to get rid of slavery all on its own.
The one foot in the door was the "Fugitive Slave Clause" found in the second paragraph of Article IV, Section 2. This portion of the Constitution clearly indicated that a slave who escaped the jurisdiction of a slavery-permitting state remained a slave and could be collected by his or her owner and returned rather than being declared free. The Constitution did not provide a clear mechanism for how this might be done, however, and Congress authorized the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 to establish that a court proceeding was required and that people who assisted escaped slaves were only subject to a fine, but not prison time. Free states were not required to be helpful to the slave owners in pursuing their escaped slaves and many jurisdictions either refused to convict escaped slaves or adopted sanctuary laws that would protect escaped slaves.
Within sixty years the Federal Government began to move more aggressively when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Now Federal marshals were compelled to assist in the process of returning slaves to their owners.
When the Federal Constitution was ratified in 1788 five of the original thirteen states had already abolished slavery - Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Vermont abolished slavery in its 1777 founding, but it was the fourteenth state, not a member of the original thirteen states.
By 1804, just sixteen years into the existence of the United States, nine out of the seventeen states at that time had abolished slavery - a majority of 53%.
When the Republican Party was established in Wisconsin in 1854 as an anti-slavery political party it clarified the debate and quickly became the dominant political party of Northern states. By 1858 there were 17 states that had abolished slavery out of 32 (still a 53% majority). That year was also the first year that the Republican Party gained control of the House of Representatives. In 1860 the anti-slavery Republicans gained control of the Presidency and of the Senate for the first time. The Federal government of the United States, for the first time in its history, was under majority control of a political party that had as its stated goal the abolition of slavery.
Seven of the Southern states seceded from the United States before Lincoln was inaugurated. The other four Southern states seceded within a few months of Lincoln becoming president. This arrangement left an unbeatable majority in the U.S. Federal government to eventually impose the abolition of slavery and override the right of the people and of the states to choose for themselves how to end slavery. In essence, the secession of the Southern states ultimately resulted in them being forced to abolish slavery, once they had lost the war. Had they remained as participating states in the Federal union, they might have found free-choice alternatives of their own making to eventually abolish slavery.
Fast-Forward to the new century - the 1900s.
Out of power Democrats and boldly empowered Republicans began to embrace the ideology of Progressivism, which sought to impose improvements on the human condition through government laws and regulation. The appeal of Progressivism is to impose morality through government dictates. The major flaw of Progressivism is that it fails to recognize the role of the individual in determining morality and in behaving morally. Government had recently imposed the moral decision to abolish slavery... why not apply the same principle to other issues?
While slavery is technically limited to some people owning other people, Progressivism is only a modified form of slavery because it permits an elite, self-empowered group to dictate behavior for other non-members of the elite.
Progressivism says that the people and the states won't be able to preserve the natural beauty of the land, therefore the Federal Government will exceed its Constitutional boundaries and gain control of land not for military bases or Federal offices and establish National Parks. New York's Niagara Falls State Park and Colorado Spring's Garden of the Gods Park prove that non-Federal jurisdictions are perfectly capable of preserving their own natural habitats.
Progressivism says that people should save for their retirement years and that the Federal Government will exceed its Constitutional boundaries and mandate a one-size-fits-all solution in the form of Social Security, then steal those funds from the very people it is intended to benefit, while preventing the people from making investments of their own with the funds.
Progressivism says that the Federal Government will exceed its Constitutional mandate to collect taxes in a fair and equitable manner from all people and all states by establishing an income tax system that violates the Fourth Amendment guarantees of citizens being secure in their personal records and documents while establishing variation in taxation rates and deductions such that no two citizens are likely to either pay the same amount nor pay the same percentage of their incomes.
Progressivism says that the Federal Government will impose one-size-fits-all standards upon the educational practices of all schools in the United States instead of allowing State and Local jurisdictions to make decisions guided by the needs and expectations of their own people.
Progressivism says that the Federal Government will violate it's Constitutional mandate not to show favor to any group - to treat all people and all states equally - by awarding housing, food and subsistence programs to some people but not to all people to equal amounts; thus overriding the ability for private citizens to more effectively help each other or for local jurisdictions to establish their own mechanisms for helping people with specific needs.
When the Federal Government abolished slavery, imposing a morality upon the people and the states, it opened the door for imposing all forms of morality upon its citizens. Abolishing slavery was the right choice, but the mechanism of imposing morality in effect established a new form of slavery - the people and the states were no longer free to make their own decisions, to learn, to improve themselves, to make the right decisions because they came to those decisions on their own.
Slavery was originally allowed as a decision of the people and the states - not endorsed or promoted by the Federal Government. Progressive policies which dictate personal behavior and state policies are simply an advancement of slavery up to the Federal level. Although it is now illegal for one person to own another person in the United States, it has become accepted that an elite group will dictate and control the behavior of ALL of the citizens of the United States.
So the question remains... did we really abolish slavery, or did we instead broaden and expand it to become national policy?
