During the Constitution’s ratification in the 1780s, a few bold Americans of both races sustained a new abolitionist movement. They considered the Constitution deceitful. “The words [are] dark and ambiguous; such as no plain man of common sense would have used,” wrote the abolitionist Samuel Bryan. They “are evidently chosen to conceal from Europe, that in this enlightened country, the practice of slavery has its advocates among men in the highest stations.”45
