Forming a new nation with its own values and beliefs was a very daunting task. It was supremely difficult when the members of the nation were holding on to the beliefs of the old ruling country. It was believed that to be a leader you had to be in the upper classes, a so called aristocrat. To be an aristocrat you had to posses large sums of land and property. Property was not in the sense we think of today. Back then, slaves were also considered property. So the vast majority of our leaders owned slaves. In fact George Mason, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison owned over four hundred slaves between themselves. This proves to be very odd since these are the leaders who fought for equal rights for all men.

George Mason Wrote, in the Declaration of Rights of 1776, "All men are by nature equally...