Jonah Patel
The United States Constitution, signed in 1787 and ratified in 1789, has been the subject of much debate regarding its stance on slavery. While the document does not contain the words slave or slavery, it dealt directly with American slavery in at least five of its provisions, including the Three-Fifths Clause, the Fugitive Slave Clause, and the Importation Clause. The framers of the Constitution, many of whom were slave owners, believed that concessions on slavery were necessary to maintain political unity and gain the support of southern delegates. They prioritized a strong central government over immediate abolition, reflecting the sentiment at the time that slavery was a violation of the laws of nature but an evil they knew not well how to deal with. This compromise allowed slavery to continue and contributed to future conflicts, including the Civil War.
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What You'll Learn
The Three-Fifths Clause
Slaveholding states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives they could send to Congress. Free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, as those slaves had no voting rights. The Three-Fifths Compromise 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 representation 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 proposed by James Madison, who explained the reasoning for the ratio in Federalist No. 54, "The Apportionment of Members Among the States". Madison's proposal ultimately failed to gain unanimous approval to amend the Articles of Confederation, falling two states short.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was one of four clauses in the Constitution that indirectly addressed slavery and the slave trade, without using the terms "slave" or "slavery". The framers of the Constitution believed that slavery was morally wrong and would eventually die out, and they did not want that permanent moral stain on the document. Instead, they referred to slaves as persons.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was superseded and repealed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which provided that "representatives shall be apportioned... counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."
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Fugitive Slave Clause
The Fugitive Slave Clause, also known as the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labour Clause, was Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. It required that a "Person held to Service or Labour" (usually a slave, apprentice, or indentured servant) who fled to another state be returned to their master in the state from which they escaped. The clause was adopted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, during which many slavery issues were debated. It was proposed by Pierce Butler and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, who sought "to require fugitive slaves and servants to be delivered up like criminals".
The Fugitive Slave Clause gave slaveholders the right to reclaim their "property", an enslaved person, across state lines. It effectively nullified the fact that many Northern states had outlawed slavery, as they were now required to return escaped slaves to their enslavers in the South. The clause was unanimously approved without further debate, despite objections from James Wilson and Roger Sherman, who argued that it "would oblige the executive of the State to [seize fugitive slaves], at the public expense".
The Fugitive Slave Clause formed the basis for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which gave slaveholders the right to capture their escaped slaves. The enforcement provisions of this act were strengthened as part of the Compromise of 1850, which gave the federal government a role in capturing fugitive slaves and required all states, slaveholding or not, to return escaped slaves to their enslavers.
The Fugitive Slave Clause was rendered mostly irrelevant by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery "except as a punishment for crime".
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Framers' avoidance of the words 'slave' and 'slavery'
The original United States Constitution did not contain the words "slave" or "slavery" within its text. The framers of the Constitution consciously avoided using these words, recognising that they would sully the document. The framers' conflicted stance towards slavery led them to deliberately avoid using direct language about the institution in the Constitution. They believed that slavery was morally wrong and would eventually die out, and they did not want a permanent moral stain on the document. Instead, they referred to slaves as "persons".
The framers made a prudential compromise with slavery because they sought to achieve their highest goal of a stronger Union of republican self-government. They believed that concessions on slavery were the price for the support of southern delegates for a strong central government. About 25 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention owned slaves, and many harboured moral qualms about slavery. Some, including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, became members of anti-slavery societies.
The framers' avoidance of the words "slave" and "slavery" in the Constitution is indicative of their embarrassment by the institution and their hope that it would eventually become extinct. However, their failure to directly address the issue of slavery in the document left the seeds for future conflict. The Constitution included several clauses that implicitly protected slavery and entrenched it as a national issue, embedding it deeper into the fabric of American governance.
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Framers' moral opposition to slavery
The US Constitution, as Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the Supreme Court, said on its 200th anniversary, was "defective from the start". The document laid the foundation for future tragic events by sidestepping the slavery issue and leaving out a majority of Americans when using the phrase "We the People".
The framers of the Constitution believed that concessions on slavery were necessary to gain the support of southern delegates for a strong central government. They were convinced that if the Constitution restricted the slave trade, states like South Carolina and Georgia would refuse to join the Union. This belief was echoed by John Rutledge of South Carolina, who stated that "Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question" and that unless the regulation of the slave trade was left to the states, the southern-most states "shall not be parties to the union".
However, many framers harbored moral qualms about slavery. In fact, of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, about 25 owned slaves, and some, including Benjamin Franklin (a former slaveholder) and Alexander Hamilton (born in a slave colony in the British West Indies), became members of anti-slavery societies. They believed that slavery was morally wrong and would eventually die out. This is reflected in the Constitution, which never used the words "slave" or "slavery" and instead referred to slaves as "persons". The framers consciously avoided these terms, recognising that they would sully the document and leave a permanent moral stain.
The framers' moral opposition to slavery is further evidenced by the four clauses that indirectly addressed the issue: the Three-Fifths Clause, the ban on Congress ending the slave trade for twenty years, the fugitive slave clause, and the slave insurrections. The Three-Fifths Clause, which counted three-fifths of a state's slave population when apportioning representation, gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College. However, Frederick Douglass argued that this clause encouraged freedom, as it gave "an increase of 'two-fifths' of political power to free over slave states". The second clause, known as the Importation Clause, was not meant to protect the slave trade but rather to end it, as evidenced by the bill that President Thomas Jefferson signed into law in 1808.
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The economic and political realities of slavery
However, the invention of the modern cotton gin in 1793 changed this outlook. Slavery became even more entrenched in the South, as cotton became a more sustainable and economically viable crop. This economic dependence on slavery made it politically impossible for the Framers to abolish the institution outright. Many of the Framers, including some who owned slaves, had moral qualms about slavery. They believed it was a “violation of the laws of nature" and "wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically".
However, they prioritised political unity and the creation of a strong central government over immediate abolition. They knew that if they included explicit anti-slavery provisions in the Constitution, states like South Carolina and Georgia would refuse to join the Union. This could potentially lead to separate confederacies of free and slave states, with the free states losing all leverage to influence the slave states to end slavery.
As a result, the Framers made several compromises in the Constitution to accommodate slavery. These included the Three-Fifths Clause, which gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College, and the Fugitive Slave Clause, which required states to return fugitive slaves. They also included provisions that prohibited federal interference with the international slave trade for at least 20 years.
These compromises were intended to preserve the Union and avoid a direct confrontation over slavery. However, they also entrenched slavery further and contributed to a "moral and legal crisis" that would eventually lead to the Civil War.
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Frequently asked questions
The framers of the Constitution did not endorse slavery. Many of them believed that slavery was morally wrong and would eventually die out. However, they also believed that the economic and political realities of the time made it impossible to abolish slavery.
The framers of the Constitution did not use the words "slave" or "slavery" in the document. Instead, they used euphemisms like "Person held to Service or Labour" and referred to slaves as "persons". They also included clauses that indirectly addressed slavery, such as the Three-Fifths Clause and the Fugitive Slave Clause.
The framers of the Constitution did not explicitly try to end slavery. While some of them voiced objections to slavery, they ultimately prioritized political unity over abolition. They believed that if they included anti-slavery provisions in the Constitution, some states would refuse to join the Union.
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