History of Slavery Constitution in US

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The United States Constitution that was created on September 17, 1787, during the Constitution Convention was strongly a pro-slavery document. The framers of the constitution did not tackle clearly the issue of slavery and they were compelled to make a temporary compromise in order to unite the states in the country.

Although the framers of the document knew that there was a problem appertaining to allowing slavery to thrive, their hands were tied as they were concentrating on a bigger problem of forming a new united country. Thus, they were rather vague on the matter and did not deliberate upon it deeply. As a result, until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, the 1787 constitution was pro slavery by both ‘intention and effect.’

In the 1787 U.S. Constitution, there is no mention of the word slavery. However, in the eighty-four clauses of the legal document passed at the Constitutional Convention, six are in fact unswervingly related to the issue of slavery that was being practiced in the United States during the eighteenth century.

In addition, five others had inferences to slavery that were discussed during the historic Constitutional Convention. The heart of the supporting nature of the 1787 U.S. Constitution in regards to slavery is found Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3.

It states “representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons” (Gales and Seaton, 1310).

Intentionally, the framers of the constitution ignored the pernicious “S” word in this clause. Consequently, this gave the slaveholding states a reason to rejoice as their power and influence would be enhanced according to the increase in number of slaves they owned.

This was the situation since the clause was concerned with the number of representatives elected to congress; that is, if two states had the same number of free persons but one had slaves, then the state with slaves would inevitably get more representatives and thus more political power. Since the slaveholding states were given more political power based on the number of slaves they had, this gave them the incentive to enslave more people.

Article I section 9 propagated the business of trading in slaves. This is because it denied Congress the power to stop the business for twenty years from the time it was passed into law. It states, “The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty maybe imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person” (Gales and Seaton, 1310).

The word person(s) in the clause is used in reference to the slaves who were taken from different parts of the world into the United States. Article IV works in association with the idea of depriving Congress the power to stop slave trade by providing the rare protection of making the amendment of the idea a near impossibility.

In Slavery’s Constitution, historian David Waldstreicher argues that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 accommodated the practice of slavery in the U.S. Waldstreicher gives an analysis on how the makers of the Constitution debated, bargained, and wrestled over the issue of slavery at the Constitutional Convention. He notes that their efforts to reach a compromise on the issue gave rise to two different aspects of the politics of slavery that were intended to perpetuate it (Waldstreicher, 1).

These are slavery as a type of authority over some particular individuals and as an economic institution. In reference to the famous three-fifths clause, Waldstreicher maintains that “all the other persons” in the phrase refers to slaves and this allotment was meant to increase the influence of the slave-owners. To further support that the Constitutional Convention accommodated slavery, he observes that the debate to pass the legal document with the clauses supporting slavery was not condemned by the delegates from the Deep South.

He adds that the lack of discussions on the issue in some states, such as North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, were an effort to accommodate the Constitution. These states seemed satisfied with the insufficiency pro-slavery Constitution that the Convention had formulated.

During the making of the Constitution, there was divided opinion between the supporters and opponents on the issue of slavery. As aforementioned, based on the three-fifths compromise, the supporters of slavery wanted to maintain their power and influence in the country because they could send more representatives to Congress and fail to remit direct taxes as desired.

In addition, the slaveholders were looking at slaves as the biggest factor of production. They offered free labor and the people who had huge plantations greatly reduced their cost of production. Because of the ‘benefits’ that the slaves provided, the delegates of the Convention never wanted to regulate slavery.

On the other hand, the opponents of slavery argued that one of the principles that led to the establishment of the United States of America was the notion that “All men were created equal”; thus, the sanctioning of slavery was hypocritical. Furthermore, they argued that the representation of African Americans as “three-fifths’ of a person was demeaning to their human condition as everyone is united by the common fabric of humanity.

The supporters of Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 argued that the clause is anti-slavery as it gives the states with slaves the opportunity to send more representatives in Congress as compared to the states without slaves. However, the opponents of the clause maintained that slaves were not allowed to vote; thus, the congressional representatives could not represent their interests as they were regarded to be just a form of “chattel” or property without basic freedoms.

James Madison viewed slavery as a ‘necessary evil’ that needed to be eradicated from the United States. In his writings in the Federalist Papers, he enshrined the notion of the Bill of Rights that would accord all the slaves in the country their rights to be treated humanely.

As one of the leading delegates of the Convention, he argued that it would not be right to state plainly in the Constitution the “idea that there could be property in men”; consequently, the words “slave” and “slavery” did not appear there. The pernicious words were replaced with euphemistic terminology in the sections of the Constitution that were tackling the issue of the slavery system.

In the Federalist papers he authored, Madison explained that the institution of slavery was wrong and regrettable as it oppressed innocent victims, undermined the moral integrity of the slaves, bred contempt for honest labor, and encouraged idle masters to indulge in their worst passions so as to practice tyranny. Madison particularly tackles the issue in Federalist Paper No. 38 in which he says:

“The existing Congress, without any such control, can make treaties which they themselves have declared, and most of the States have recognized, to be the supreme law of the land. Is the importation of slaves permitted by the new Constitution for twenty years? By the old it is permitted forever” (Madison, para.9).

On the other hand, Waldstreicher attacked the views of Madison concerning slavery because he demonstrated mixed opinion on the issue. Waldstreicher points out that like most of the southern delegates to the Convention, Madison was a slaveholder; thus, his views on what was referred to as “peculiar institution” of slavery were deeply conflicting. As much as deep down he knew that the practice was evil, Madison did not see how the economy of the South could grow without the much-needed labor from the slaves.

Waldstreicher points out that Madison could not envision how whites and blacks could possibly live together; therefore, he proposed for the establishment of a different black settlement in a different place from the U.S. Nonetheless, despite their differences on the issue of slavery, Waldstreicher and Madison wanted slavery to be abolished completely from the U.S. Worth mentioning in this perspective, Madison proposed for the adoption of the Bill of Rights that eventually led to the abolition of slavery.

In conclusion, it is evident that the 1787 Constitution was proslavery. On drafting the document, the delegates had the opportunity to put an end to the practice of slavery and accord the blacks full citizenship under the new Constitution. However, the delegates threw cards on the table and compromised to protect the slaveholders. Thus, for about twenty years, the blacks were denied their rights as they were supposed to provide free labor for the growth of the economy of the young nation.

Works Cited

Gales, Joseph, and Seaton, William W. Register for debated in congress,…. Washington: United States Congress, 1825-37. Print.

Madison, James. “The Federalist Papers No.38.” US Government Info. The New York Times Company, 2011. Web.

Waldstreicher, David. Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification. New York: Hill and Wang; 2009. Print.

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History of Slavery Constitution in US

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