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The US has a lot to make up for when it comes to slavery, we

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may put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill and we might talk about paying

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reparations to the descendants of slaves but um, we're still not exactly er.. quite in the [Woman walks up to family holding lots of cash]

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clear there.. And incredibly slavery is still alive and kickin' in many parts of

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the world. Here in the US we didn't ditch slavery until 1865. It isn't that the

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founding fathers didn't know slavery was bad when they sat down to hammer out the [Founding fathers stood around a table]

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US Constitution, many of them even the ones who owned slaves like Thomas

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Jefferson knew that the practice of owning other human beings didn't exactly

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match up with America's democratic ideals. But.. you know there's always a but.

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Owning slaves in 18th century America meant you had power, and when it came to [Slave owner with a crown on laughing]

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the Constitution the founding fathers were way less interested in assigning

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rights to black people than they were in counting their slaves as population.

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With the three-fifths compromise the white men writing the Constitution figured

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that each slave equaled three-fifths of a person. And that was all done for taxation

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and congressional seating purposes. While men like Alexander Hamilton were

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busy shoving the north towards industrialization and away from slavery [Digger truck pushing a map of the north]

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southerners were bound and determined to rely on slaves to maintain their way of

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life. Wasn't like all of those cash crops were going to pick themselves, you know

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kind of like your nose.. And since the North was always in need of sugar for

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its morning coffee, nobody made too much of a fuss over the enslavement of [Waiter bringing pots of sugar over to a table]

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millions of people. Well this nonsense went on for years southerners refused to

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even consider ditching slavery while over time more and more northerners

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viewed slavery as a stain upon their country's conscience. Southerners thought

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they should get to leave the Union whenever they felt like it. Northerners

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said they'd go to war if the southern states seseded. Clearly things got a

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little awkward... Yeah, well in the end the south rebelled as you know President [The south walks away from meeting table]

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Lincoln and his government told the southern states that if they didn't get

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back into the Union like right now the North would free the slaves. And so on

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January first 1863 Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation. [Lincoln holding up a document]

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This document said that all slaves in the Confederate

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States were free from there on out, so you might wonder why Lincoln didn't just

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use the Emancipation Proclamation to burn the institution of slavery to the

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ground altogether. Well the truth is he couldn't, the Emancipation Proclamation

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wasn't a law but rather a command issued by Lincoln as the leader of the American [Fire extinguishers being used on building labelled 'Institution of Slavery']

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armed forces during a time of war. And while the Emancipation Proclamation

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didn't end slavery it did make it possible for the Union Army to free some

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3 million slaves as the boys in blue began to make inroads into the south.

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Well two years later the US Congress would ratify the Thirteenth Amendment

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and the states would ratify that amendment before 1865 was over and

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that's how American slavery finally kicked the bucket. As for some other [Woman uses a flamethrower on 'Institution of Slavery' building]

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parts of the world well, they still need to get their act together.

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