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settlers were predominantly against slavery, those who owned slaves became dependent on them. What's more is that many of those who owned slaves, and those who had made a business out of slave trade, were the wealthiest in the new nation. They held the power. So, when the Constitution was being drafted, provisions were made to allow slavery to continue in states that already allowed it, but no regulations on other states were made. Some states outright illegalized the trading and commerce of slavery. Only slaves born within the state, or held at that time, were permitted to be kept as slaves.This could have limited slavery, and possibly even cause it to end on its own. However, state legislations began popping up under the guise of imposing limitations on slave trade. Taxes, from $5 to $10 per sold person were being collected by the state government. Now, not only the wealthy plantation owners and professional slave traders, but also the government had begun to reap the financial benefits of slave trade. The conflicts leading to the abolition movements, Civil War, and equal suffrage riots; the racial and social divide that has been widening ever since; and the unequal caste system of the United States rests on the way the new government approach slavery laws in the first decade of the New Nation's development.

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