The Founders and Slavery

[Joan Del Fattore]

     There's also the usual conflation of politics and economics.
Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia, the national headquarters of the
Abolitionist movement, was burned by an unlikely combination of nativists
and Irish immigrants, all of whom feared an influx of cheap labor if
the slaves were suddenly freed.  Many of the nativists belonged to the
Native American Party while the Irish Catholics tended to be Democrats,
but that wasn't the point.