These documents stated that all men were created equal, and were viewed equally under God. If these statements were taken literally by the American people, slavery would have ended then and there, as well as the vast majority of other racial issues. However, in reality, this was not the case. The American people took these statements to mean that all white people of european descent were created equal. In order to avoid the Civil War, slavery had to have ended with these two documents. Any time later in American history would have been ineffective, as the South had become heavily dependent on slave labor in the years following the Revolutionary War.
