Answer:
Slavery was a paradox in the United States because it went against the ideals of freedom on which the nation was founded.
Explanation:
Slavery in the United States began shortly after the first British settlers were installed in Virginia and ended with the adoption of the XIIIth Amendment to the American Constitution on December 6, 1865.
Slavery with a racialist foundation gradually became institutionalized, at a variable rate depending on the colonies, in the second half of the 17th century, under the effect of court decisions and legislative developments. Gradually abolished in the northern states of the country in the years following the American revolution, slavery occupied a central position in the social and economic organization of the southern United States. Slaves were used as servants and in the agricultural sector, in particular in the plantations of tobacco and cotton, which were essential in the 19th century as the main export crops of the country. In total, the Thirteen colonies and then the United States brought about 600,000 Africans, or 5% of the total slaves deported to the Americas, until the prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1808. Before the Civil War, the the 1860 US census counted four million slaves in the country. At the end of this conflict, the XIIIth amendment to the Constitution put an end to slavery by extending to the whole of the American territory the effects of the proclamation of emancipation of January 1, 1863, without however settling the question of the integration of African-Americans into the national community, as evidenced by the Black Codes, the Jim Crow Laws, the grandfather clause or the development of the Ku Klux Klan.
Given that the American nation, according to the Declaration of Independence, is based on the ideological pillars of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it was paradoxical that these rights are denied to so many people just because of their racial status.
