The student will read the United States Constitution through the first ten amendments, and write one three-page paper discussing whether the US Constitution as ratified, and then amended by the first ten amendments was a pro or anti-slavery document. In other words did the Constitution legally sanction and defend slavery even to the point of protecting the right of a slave owner to bring his slaves into the territories of the United States, or did the Constitution contain the legal instruments to ultimately prohibit its spread into the territories of the United States, and ultimately bring about the legal demise of slavery as an institution?
