The original United States Constitution did not contain a Bill of Rights; it was added only after several states threatened to withhold ratification without explicit guarantees for fundamental civil liberties.
To attract settlers to America, colonies like Virginia used a 'headright system' that granted 50 acres of land to anyone who paid for their own passage or for the passage of another person.
The U.S. ban on the international slave trade in 1808 fueled a massive and brutal domestic slave trade, where enslaved families were torn apart as people were sold from the Upper South to the labor-starved plantations of the Deep South.
The U.S. Constitution's 'Three-Fifths Compromise' counted each enslaved person as three-fifths of a human for the purpose of granting southern states more political power in Congress.
While signing the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin admitted he didn't agree with every part, but urged others to sign by asking them to 'doubt a little of his own infallibility' for the sake of national unity.
