Omar Bennett
The original United States Constitution, drafted in 1787, did not contain the words slave or slavery within its text. However, it directly addressed American slavery in at least five of its provisions and indirectly protected the institution in other parts of the document. The Southern states' economies were entirely dependent on slavery, and the framers of the Constitution believed that concessions on slavery were necessary to gain the support of southern delegates for a strong central government. The issue of slavery was a significant source of tension between the North and the South, and it ultimately contributed to the Civil War.
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What You'll Learn
The Three-Fifths Compromise
Slaveholding states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives those states could elect and send to Congress. Free states, on the other hand, wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, since those slaves had no voting rights.
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Fugitive Slave Clause
The Fugitive Slave Clause, also known as the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labour Clause, is Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. The clause requires a "Person held to Service or Labour" in one state, who escapes to another state, to be returned to their master in the state from which they escaped. The clause was adopted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
The exact wording of the clause is:
> No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery except as a punishment for criminal acts, has made the clause mostly irrelevant. The Fugitive Slave Clause did not use the words "slave" or "slavery", in keeping with the rest of the Constitution, which also avoided these terms.
The Fugitive Slave Clause was enacted to protect the interests of slaveholders, who were concerned about the implications of the Somerset v. Stewart decision in 1772, in which an escaped slave from Massachusetts who had reached England was declared free and could not be returned to his previous owners. The Fugitive Slave Clause was also a response to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which, while abolishing slavery in the territory, provided for the return of fugitive slaves who escaped there.
The Fugitive Slave Clause was heavily emphasised in South Carolina's Declaration of the Immediate Causes, which induced and justified its secession from the Federal Union in 1860. The declaration accused Northern states of flagrantly violating the clause.
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The Importation of Persons Clause
The US Constitution, drafted in 1787, did not contain the words "slave" or "slavery" in its text. However, it directly addressed American slavery in at least five provisions and indirectly protected the institution in other parts of the document. One of these provisions was the Importation of Persons Clause, also known as the Migration or Importation Clause or the Slave Trade Clause.
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution, prohibited the federal government from limiting the importation of "persons" where existing state governments allowed it, for 20 years after the Constitution came into effect. This clause did not explicitly state who the "persons" were who might be "imported". However, it was understood at the time to refer primarily to enslaved African persons.
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The Civil War and the 13th Amendment
The U.S. Constitution, drafted in 1787, did not contain the words "slave" or "slavery" within its text. However, it directly dealt with American slavery in at least five of its provisions and indirectly protected the institution in other parts of the document. The Southern states' economies were completely dependent on slavery, and the framers of the Constitution believed that concessions on slavery were the price for the support of southern delegates for a strong central government.
The Three-Fifths Clause, for example, gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College. The Constitution also prohibited Congress from outlawing the Atlantic slave trade for twenty years and included a fugitive slave clause requiring the return of runaway slaves to their owners. These measures ensured that slavery remained a national issue, embedding it deeper into the fabric of American governance.
The issue of slavery contributed to the Civil War, and during the war, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all enslaved people in the Confederate states "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." However, the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation as it only applied to areas of the Confederacy in rebellion and not to the "border states" that remained in the Union.
To make emancipation permanent, a constitutional amendment was needed. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, passed in Congress during the Civil War and was ratified in late 1865. Section 1 of the 13th Amendment outlawed chattel slavery and involuntary servitude (except as punishment for a crime), while Section 2 gave Congress the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. The 13th Amendment, along with the 14th and 15th Amendments, greatly expanded the civil rights of Americans, particularly Black Americans, and sought to establish equality.
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The Constitution's omission of the word slave
The US Constitution, drafted in 1787, does not contain the words "slave" or "slavery" within its text. However, it directly dealt with American slavery in at least five of its provisions and indirectly protected the institution in other parts of the document. The omission of the word "slave" from the Constitution was likely intentional, as the framers of the Constitution recognized that explicitly mentioning slavery would sully the document.
The Constitution included several provisions related to slavery, such as the Three-Fifths Clause (Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3), which counted three-fifths of a state's slave population when apportioning representation, giving the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College. Additionally, the Importation of Persons Clause (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1) prohibited the federal government from limiting the importation of "persons" for 20 years after the Constitution took effect, effectively protecting the international slave trade. The Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2) also required states to return runaway slaves to their owners.
The framers of the Constitution made concessions on slavery to gain the support of southern delegates for a strong central government. They believed that if the Constitution restricted slavery, southern states like South Carolina and Georgia would refuse to join the Union. This compromise between the Northern and Southern states was essential for the ratification of the Constitution and the formation of the Union. However, it was ultimately unsustainable, as evidenced by the Civil War.
The omission of the word "slave" from the Constitution reflects the conflicted stance of the framers towards slavery. Many of them had moral qualms about the institution, and some, such as Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, became members of anti-slavery societies. The economic and political realities of slavery also made it challenging to address directly during the Constitutional Convention. The South's complete economic dependence on slavery meant that abolishing it was not politically feasible at the time.
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Frequently asked questions
The Constitution did not contain the words "slave" or "slavery" within its text, but it directly dealt with American slavery in at least five of its provisions and indirectly protected the institution elsewhere in the document. The Three-Fifths Compromise, for example, counted three-fifths of a state's slave population when apportioning representation, giving the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College. The Constitution also prohibited Congress from outlawing the Atlantic slave trade for twenty years and included a fugitive slave clause requiring the return of runaway slaves to their owners.
The Southern states were completely economically dependent on slavery, and it was feared that South Carolina and Georgia would refuse to join the Union if the Constitution restricted the slave trade. Many of the framers also believed that concessions on slavery were the price for the support of southern delegates for a strong central government.
Yes, the framers' decision to sidestep the slavery issue left the seeds for future conflict, including the Civil War. The Constitution's protection of slavery was also described as the document's biggest flaw by Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. It took a Civil War and constitutional amendments to eliminate slavery, and racial inequalities that can be traced back to slavery have existed throughout American history and persist today.
