The
Constitution and Slavery
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n the 200th anniversary of the U.S.
Constitution, Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the
Supreme Court, said that the Constitution was "defective from the
start." He point out that the framers had left out a majority of Americans
when they wrote the phrase, "We the People." While some members of
the Constitutional Convention voiced "eloquent objections" to
slavery, Marshall said they "consented to a document which laid a
foundation for the tragic events which were to follow."
The word "slave" does not appear in
the Constitution. The framers consciously avoided the word, recognizing that it
would sully the document. Nevertheless,
slavery received important protections in the Constitution. The notorious Three-fifths clause--which
counted three fifths of the slave population in apportioning
representation--gave the South extra representation in the House and extra
votes in the Electoral College. Thomas Jefferson would have lost the election
of 1800 if not for the Three-fifths compromise. The Constitution also
prohibited Congress from outlawing the Atlantic slave trade for twenty years. A
fugitive slave clause required the return of runaway slaves to their owners.
The Constitution gave the federal government the power to put down domestic
rebellions, including slave insurrections.
The framers of the
Constitution believed that concessions on slavery were the price for the
support of southern delegates for a strong central government. They were
convinced that if the Constitution restricted the slave trade, South Carolina
and Georgia would refuse to join the Union. But by sidestepping the slavery
issue, the framers left the seeds for future conflict. After the convention approved the great compromise, Madison wrote:
"It seems now to be pretty well understood that the real difference of
interests lies not between the large and small but between the northern and
southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences form the line of
discrimination."
Of the 55 Convention delegates, about 25
owned slaves. Many of the framers harbored moral qualms about slavery. Some,
including Benjamin Franklin (a former slaveowner) and Alexander Hamilton (who
was born in a slave colony in the British West Indies) became members of
antislavery societies.
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n August 21, 1787, a bitter debate broke out
over a South Carolina proposal to prohibit the federal government from
regulating the Atlantic slave trade.
Luther Martin of Maryland, a slaveholder, said that the slave should be
subject to federal regulation since the entire nation would be responsible for
suppressing slave revolts. He also
considered the slave trade contrary to America's republican ideals. "It is
inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution," he said, "and
dishonorable to the American character to have such a feature in the
constitution."
John Rutledge of South Carolina responded
forcefully. "Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this
question," he insisted. Unless regulation of the slave trade was left to
the states, the southern-most states "shall not be parties to the
union." A Virginia delegate,
George Mason, who owned hundreds of slaves, spoke out against slavery in
ringing terms. "Slavery," he said, "discourages arts and
manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves." Slavery
also corrupted slaveholders and threatened the country with divine punishment:
"Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of
heaven on a country."
Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut accused
slaveholders from Maryland and Virginia of hypocrisy. They could afford to
oppose the slave trade, he claimed, because "slaves multiply so fast in
Virginia and Maryland that it is cheaper to raise then import them, whilst in
the sickly rice swamps [of South Carolina and Georgia] foreign supplies are
necessary." Ellsworth suggested that ending the slave trade would benefit
slaveowners in the Chesapeake region, since the demand for slaves in other
parts of the South was increase the price of slaves once the external supply
was cut off.
The controversy over the Atlantic slave trade
was ultimately settled by compromise. In exchange for a 20-year ban on any
restrictions on the Atlantic slave trade, southern delegates agreed to remove a
clause restricting the national government's power to enact laws requiring
goods to be shipped on American vessels (benefiting northeastern shipbuilders
and sailors). The same day this agreement was reached, the convention also
adopted the fugitive slave clause, requiring the return of runaway slaves to
their owners.
Was the Constitution a proslavery document,
as abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison claimed when he burned the document in
1854 and called it "a covenant with death and an agreement with
Hell"? This question still provokes controversy. If the Constitution
temporarily strengthened slavery, it also created a central government powerful
enough to eventually abolish the institution.
Discussion Topic: Did the framers of the Constitution miss an opportunity to put slavery on the path to eventual extinction?
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n June 1787, the Pennsylvania Society for the
Abolition of Slavery--the world's first antislavery society--asked its
president, Benjamin Franklin, to deliver an anti-slave trade resolution to the
Constitutional Convention. The resolution declared: "In vain will be"
Americans' "Pretentions to a love of liberty or regard for national
character while they share in the profits of a Commerce that can only be conducted
upon Rivers of human tears and blood."
Franklin never presented that resolution or
any other antislavery materials to the convention. He explained that he
"thought it advisable to let them lie over for the present."
1. Why do you think that antislavery northern delegates like
Franklin were reluctant to speak out openly against slavery at the
Constitutional Convention?
2. Why, in contrast, were slaveowners, like George Mason of
Virginia and Luther Martin of Maryland, more willing to speak out against the
Atlantic slave trade?
3. Why did delegates feel that they had to placate South
Carolina and Georgia at a time when those states were faced by a serious
military threat from the Spanish in Florida and from the powerful Creek Indian
confederacy?
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eferring to Georgia, George Washington remarked: "If a weak
State, with powerful tribes of Indians in its rear & the Spaniards on its
flank, do not incline to embrace a strong general Government there must,
I should think, be either wickedness, or insanity in their conduct."