ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by punting,

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the best way to get rid of a problem. Yeah.

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Give this excerpt a read.

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[ mumbles ]

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[ mumbling continues ]

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, and now the question:

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In the Articles of Confederation,

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the issue of slavery was... what?

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And here are your potential answers. [ meow ]

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Settled... settled... not settled... not settled... Hmm.

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All right, our biggest clue here is the date

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that the Articles of Confederation was written.

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So remember that year - 1781 -

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as we check out these answers.

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Did the Articles of Confederation A -

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settle the issue of slavery by allowing the practice

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but prohibiting the importation of new slaves?

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Well, let's see.

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International slave trading wasn't banned until 1808.

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That's almost 30 years later. So that eliminates A.

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And what about B?

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They settled slavery by establishing that all new states

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would be free states.

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Well, does the Missouri Compromise

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ring a bell? It should, because that 1820 act

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attempted to resolve the issue of whether or not

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new states would allow slavery.

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And even that didn't fix things.

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In fact, it took another 45 years

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for the government to settle things once and for all.

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And it was bloody when they did.

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So it's not B, either.

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So then maybe the issue of slavery was C -

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not settled by the Articles but was later settled

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by the ratification of the Constitution.

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Well, that sure would have saved everyone a lot of trouble down the road,

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but the Constitution also failed to

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clarify the government's position on slavery.

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That knocks out C, as well.

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Which means that slavery was D -

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not settled in the Articles

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and continued to be an issue in later years.

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And did it ever. Slavery was

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the giant elephant in the room in the early days of the country.

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Nobody wanted to talk about it because it always

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ended in a big disagreement.

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So rather than talk about the problem,

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they just ignored it. So the correct answer is D.

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And we all know that when you ignore

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your problems, well, they just go away, right?

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[ umm... ]

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