Little did the House know that the matter was soon to grow and they were about to lose any control they had over the matter. Quickly, another petition was sent to the House from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, but this petition had Benjamin Franklin signature at the bottom. Ellis express that because of Franklin's signature at the bottom of the petition it made it obvious that "calmly receiving these requests, then banishing them to the congressional version of oblivion was not going to work" because he could not be as easily ignored as the Quakers (Ellis 83). Congress had no idea how to act on the subject of slavery because it is controversial for the public causing the government to just keep their silence on the subject.
Ellis pulls the reader into the middle of the action by including the debate on the controversial subject of slavery in the chapter. Thomas Scott acknowledges "the Constitution imposed restrictions on Congress' power to end slave trade but said nothing about abolishing slavery itself," hinting to Congress on the use of the Declaration and not the Constitution (Ellis 84). While, Jackson disagreed with Scott and viewed slavery as "God's will", and all the Christian ministers in Georgia who believe that goods, such as rice could not be sold without slaves (Ellis 85). Jackson believed these people had their place in the world because of the standards of the biblical text and that the southern economy depended on slaves. Ellis expresses, the only reason the southern states agreed to ratify the Constitution was because it promised that nothing could interfere with slavery, but the Constitution only provided temporary protect against slavery because it only guaranteed the protection until 1808. John Luarance of New York noticed that slavery was "a condition that could be tolerated in the short run precisely because there was a clear consensus that it would be ended in the long run" because once the twenty years on slave protection was over so was slavery (Ellis 85).
