Slavery's Place In The Us Constitution

The United States Constitution, drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1789, did not contain the words slave or slavery but dealt directly with American slavery in at least five of its provisions and indirectly protected the institution elsewhere in the document. The Constitution's Fugitive Slave Clause, for example, gave slaveholders the right to recover an enslaved person from a different state, while the Three-Fifths Clause 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. These clauses, and others, have led to the Constitution being labelled pro-slavery, despite the intentions of some of its framers.

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The Constitution's biggest flaw

The United States Constitution, written in 1787 and ratified in 1789, did not contain the words "slave" or "slavery". However, it directly addressed American slavery in at least five of its provisions and indirectly protected the institution elsewhere in the document. The Constitution's biggest flaw was, therefore, its protection of the institution of slavery.

The Constitution dealt with slavery in several ways. Firstly, Article IV, Section 2, contains the "fugitive slave clause", which required that an escaped slave be returned to their owner. This clause formed the basis for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which gave slaveholders the right to capture and recover enslaved people who had escaped to free states. Secondly, the Constitution included the "'three-fifths' clause", which counted three-fifths of a state's slave population when apportioning representation. This gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College. Thirdly, the Constitution prohibited Congress from outlawing the Atlantic slave trade for 20 years. Fourthly, the Constitution gave the federal government the power to put down domestic rebellions, including slave insurrections. Finally, the structure of the Constitution ensured against emancipation by the new federal government, as the limited powers of Congress meant it lacked the authority to interfere in the domestic institutions of the states.

The framers of the Constitution consciously avoided using the words "slave" or "slavery", recognising that it would sully the document. Many of them had moral qualms about slavery and believed that it was morally wrong and would eventually die out. However, they also believed that concessions on slavery were necessary to gain the support of southern delegates for a strong central government. As a result, the Constitution protected and institutionalised slavery, and it was not until the Thirteenth Amendment that slavery was abolished.

The protection of slavery in the Constitution had significant consequences. It led to racial inequalities that have persisted throughout American history. It also contributed to sectionalism and conflict between the northern and southern states, as the North moved towards banning slavery while the South's economy became increasingly dependent on it. Ultimately, it took a Civil War and several constitutional amendments to eliminate slavery and its legacies in the United States.

The Fugitive Slave Clause

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.

It is notable that, as with the rest of the Constitution, the words "slave" and "slavery" are not used in this clause. This was a conscious decision by the framers of the Constitution, who recognised that the inclusion of these words would sully the document. However, the intent to refer to slaves can be inferred from the use of the phrase "held to Service or Labour".

The Three-Fifths Clause

The Three-Fifths Compromise, or the Three-Fifths Clause, was an agreement reached during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention. It pertained to the inclusion of slaves in a state's total population. This count would determine the number of seats in the House of Representatives, the number of electoral votes each state would be allocated, and the amount of money the states would pay in taxes.

The Southern slaveholding states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives they could elect and send to Congress. On the other hand, the Northern free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, as those slaves had no voting rights. The Three-Fifths Compromise was a resolution to this dispute. It counted three-fifths of each state's slave population toward that state's total population for the purpose of apportioning the House of Representatives, effectively giving the Southern states more power in the House relative to the Northern states. This gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College.

The Three-Fifths Compromise was part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution:

> 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.

The three-fifths ratio was first proposed by James Madison in 1788, and it was influenced by an amendment suggested to the Articles of Confederation in 1783. The amendment proposed that taxes be supplied by the several colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, sex, and quality, except Indians not paying taxes.

The Three-Fifths Compromise was superseded and explicitly repealed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. This amendment provided that "representatives shall be apportioned... counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."

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The Slave Insurrection Clause

The United States Constitution, drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1789, did not contain the words "slave" or "slavery" in its text. However, it dealt directly with American slavery in at least five of its provisions and indirectly protected the institution in other parts of the document. One of these provisions was the Fugitive Slave Clause, also known as the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labour Clause. This clause, found in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, required that a "Person held to Service or Labour" who fled to another state be returned to their master in the state from which they escaped.

The Fugitive Slave Clause was unanimously approved by the Convention without much debate. It was a compromise between the Southern states, where slavery was crucial to the economy, and the states where slavery had been abolished or was being contemplated for abolition. The clause was enacted to address the lack of provisions in the Articles of Confederation, which did not require free states to capture fugitive slaves and return them to their masters. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which abolished slavery in the Territory, provided for the return of fugitive slaves who had escaped there.

The Fugitive Slave Clause was controversial and heavily emphasised by South Carolina when it seceded from the Union in 1860. The state's declaration accused Northern states of flagrantly violating the clause and even named specific states. An attempt to repeal the clause during the Civil War in 1864 failed. However, the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865, which abolished slavery except as punishment for criminal acts, rendered the Fugitive Slave Clause mostly irrelevant.

The interpretation of the Fugitive Slave Clause by the US Supreme Court gave slave owners the right to seize and repossess their escaped slaves in another state, as granted by the local laws of their own state. This interpretation also deemed state laws that penalised such seizures unconstitutional, as they conflicted with the rights of slave owners. The Fugitive Slave Clause, while no longer relevant today, remains a part of the Constitution and serves as a reminder of the historical acceptance and protection of slavery in the United States.

The Migration or Importation Clause

> "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 may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person."

This clause is one of at least five provisions in the Constitution that directly dealt with American slavery. The clause prevented Congress from prohibiting the international slave trade until 1808, 20 years after the Constitution was ratified. This delay in Congress's power to prohibit the slave trade was the result of a compromise between delegates from northern and southern states during the Constitutional Convention. Many of the framers of the Constitution assumed that slavery would die out naturally in the South, as it had in the North, due to declining crop productivity. However, this assumption changed with the invention of the modern cotton gin in 1793, which made slavery economically viable again in the South.

The inclusion of the Migration or Importation Clause in the Constitution has been a subject of debate and controversy. Some argue that it protected and institutionalized slavery, while others claim that it was part of an anti-slavery Constitution that granted Congress the power to make necessary rules and regulations for the territories. Interpretations of the Constitution's impact on slavery are influenced by the specific clauses cited and how they are interpreted. Ultimately, it took a Civil War and constitutional amendments to abolish slavery and address the racial inequalities that persisted even after its elimination.

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