Life Before The Constitution
Hana Ali
Life As a Banker/Merchant
I am a banker in New York, I am part of a prosperous banker and merchant family. I don't like how things have been going, the states have been using their power to let people who owe money pay their debts with things they own. For example if someone owes $100 they can give two cows and a bushel of corn and not owe a dime! I think that if people don't pay back their debts with real money they should be put in jail where they belong. The last time the responsible state legislatures got their way and this happened the stupid farmers came with guns. knives, and clubs. Despite all this there still is some good news, I've bought thousands of dollars from the government bonds from people who were given these instead of money for being soldiers. I gave them ten cents for for every dollar in bonds and now there is a proposal to pay back all the bonds dollar for dollar and I would make a lot of money.
Life As An Enslaved African American
I am a slave in Virginia, I work on the fields from dawn to dusk. My life is very tough and eleven years ago they wrote the Constitution that stated all men are created equal. It did not take long for us to figure out that this only applied to non-colored people. We all want freedom and there are some states that have already outlawed it. There is even talk of abolishing the slave trade in every state. Even though we want to be free many of us know that even if we are free one day we will still be worse off than the farmers in the North that are being thrown in jail every day. We want real freedom, we want to be free with our own land, tools, and money. We want this but we know we will never have this we would have to start form scratch if we were ever free.
Life As A Southern Planter
I am a rich tobacco planter in Virginia, I own about 30 slaves that do all my hard work. They are the only reason I have any money. They plant, harvest, dry, and pack the tobacco. The colonies one against Great Britain but know the bankers are reluctant to lend money because people are now allowed to pay with property like cows and food. I need to borrow money to buy more slaves but none of the bankers are willing to. There are farmers in Massachusetts that are rioting and want to every one to be equal. When they say they want to be equal I wonder what they mean. They scare me because in some places they are even allowed to vote and run for office, I think that they want to take away richer peoples property (me) to be equal to us.