Today, slavery is considered as a crime, a sin. When people speak about slavery in the United States, they do not consider the context in which it occurred in the Americas. The issue is often raised to discredit the Founding
Fathers and Christianity in general. The question generally raised is: if the Founding Fathers considered morality and the Christian faith as so important, why did they fail to abolish slavery and why were some of them slave holders?
There is no doubt that George Washington and even many of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders. However, to understand this issue, it is important to know the general position of the Protestant Churches about slavery and the
context in which it occurred in America. Based on Said’s philological theory, the purpose of this study is to show the general position of the Founding Fathers towards slavery and slaves’ identity in the United States. It also analyzes the social and religious contexts in which slavery was introduced in the United States. A philological analysis shows that all the Founding Fathers did not have the same vision on the identity of black people. If some of them considered black people as inferior to white people, others considered them as equal to white people. In addition, depending on whether someone was from the North or the South, their position toward the abolition of slavery was different. Because of this duality, the Founders did not address the issue in the Declaration which stipulated that all men were born equal. They wanted both the South, which was anti-abolitionist, to ratify and sign the Declaration of Independence in 1776 as well as the North which was abolitionist. Until the Revolution, no important national effort was made to abolish slavery as many Americans were convinced that slavery was something normal. The national effort to abolish it occurred during and after the Revolution. The contribution of the Founding Fathers was enormous.

Slavery Identity Founding Fathers Revolution Liberty