FYS Town Hall Reflection

The Town Hall conducted in class on September 18th, 2020 was a very interesting learning experience. I had no idea just how complicated the issue of slavery was. As a child in elementary school, I learned about how slavery was a moral wrong, and was always confused as a child as to how another human being could whip and beat another, and yet the entire country allowed it. As I matured and advanced in school, I started to learn why slavery stayed in America for so long. This Town Hall showed me even more evidence for why slavery was allowed in America for so long. 

The economy of the south was completely slave dependent. I learned this in middle school. But the Town Hall exemplified just how badly the South needed slavery. The average cost of a slave during this time was $2000, which is around $55,000 today. Now imagine hundreds of slaves on a plantation during this time. All of those slaves were also free labor, obviously. These southern plantations were worth loads o money because of this, as the formula for net worth is assets - liabilities. Because these slaves were worth a lot as assets and were not required to be paid, these plantations had very high values. If slavery was abolished, these plantations would be worth nothing as their assets would become worthless as they would no longer be able to sell them. If the plantations kept their slaves, they would then be required to pay them, making these plantations lose more money. The abolishment of slavery did not take so long because every person was a racist, it took so long to end because of the intricacies of the southern economy and its intertwinement with slavery.

The Town Hall also showed how many people during this era were very torn about slavery. Thomas Jefferson, a revered founding father, was torn over the issue of slavery. I learned in the Town Hall that in the early half of his life, Jefferson supported slavery. He supported it because he believed trying to abolish slavery would cause a civil war, which he was right. Similar to how George Washington predicted many of America's problem in his farewell address, Jefferson predicted the civil war. Now to be fair the issue of slavery was unavoidable unlike some of the issues Washington predicted, and as the Town Hall showed, abolishing slavery was much more difficult than meets the eye.

Debating the issue of slavery really opened my eyes to today's issues, such as healthcare, where the issue seems simple but is very difficult to implement. It is obvious that giving everyone free healthcare would be a huge positive for the nation. However, finding the money to be able to fund that is challenging. Comparing it to slavery, abolishing slavery to stop the abuse of African Americans is obviously a good thing, however slavery was so integrated in to the southern economy removing it was significantly more challenging than and not worth it economically to abolish it. This is what I learned from the Town Hall: problems with a simple solution have a difficult and intricate solution.