Simone Lawson
The United States Constitution has been criticized for its stance on slavery and the indirect mention of African Americans. The Three-Fifths Clause, Article I, Section 2, stated that for representation in Congress, enslaved Black people in a state would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants. This was part of a series of compromises enacted by the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which also prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territories and ended U.S. participation in the international slave trade in 1807. The Constitution did not use the words slave or slavery, but it included four clauses that indirectly addressed the issue, including the Three-Fifths Clause, the ban on Congress ending the slave trade for twenty years, the fugitive slave clause, and the slave insurrections. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, passed after the Civil War, granted freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote to newly freed slaves, but the Southern commitment to white supremacy remained intense, and the Supreme Court sanctioned segregation laws. The Constitution's legacy regarding race and slavery in the United States is still debated, with some arguing it was a pro-slavery document, while others contend it laid the foundation for eventual abolition.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Clause | Three-Fifths Clause |
| Article | I |
| Section | 2 |
| Purpose | For purposes of representation in Congress |
| Enslaved blacks in a state | Counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state |
| Compromises | Prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territories |
| Ended U.S. participation in the international slave trade in 1807 | |
| Concessions | Slavery was the price for the support of southern delegates for a strong central government |
| If the Constitution restricted the slave trade, South Carolina and Georgia would refuse to join the Union | |
| Abolitionists | Believed that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document |
| Amendments | Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments |
| Granted freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote |
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What You'll Learn
The Three-Fifths Clause
The clause was a compromise between delegates from the Northern and Southern states at the Constitutional Convention. The Southern states, where slavery was prevalent, wanted their entire population, including slaves, to be counted to determine the number of Representatives they could elect and send to Congress. On the other hand, the Northern states, which had abolished slavery, wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, as those slaves had no voting rights.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was an attempt to resolve this dispute. It effectively gave the Southern states more power in the House of Representatives relative to the Northern states. This compromise reflected the observation made by James Madison, a delegate at the Constitutional Convention and future U.S. President, that the states were divided, not by their size, but principally by whether they had slaves or not.
It is important to note that the Three-Fifths Clause has often been misinterpreted to mean that African Americans were considered three-fifths of a person or citizen. However, this clause did not refer to the individual status of African Americans but rather to the way in which states' populations, including enslaved people, were counted for representation and taxation purposes.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was superseded and explicitly repealed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which provided for representatives to be apportioned based on the whole number of persons in each state, excluding untaxed Indigenous people.
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The Importation Clause
The Import-Export Clause, also known as the Importation Clause, is outlined in Article I, Section 10, Clause 2 of the US Constitution. The clause states that no state can impose duties on imports or exports without the consent of Congress. This was to prevent states from imposing tariffs and regulations that conflicted with Congress' efforts to regulate trade with foreign nations.
The clause was adopted by the Constitutional Convention, which also prohibited the federal government from imposing taxes or duties on exports. The Import-Export Clause was designed to address the issues of commercial strife between states and the lack of secure funding for the federal government under the Articles of Confederation.
The Supreme Court has interpreted the Import-Export Clause in cases such as Brown v. Maryland, where it enunciated the original package doctrine. The Court ruled that imported goods stored in their original packages in a warehouse did not lose their quality as imports and were subject to the taxing power of the state. However, taxing goods that had been mixed up with the mass of property in the country was considered a duty on imports and prohibited by the Constitution.
The Import-Export Clause has been cited in other cases, such as Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, where the Court held that goods brought from another state were not within the clause's scope. The clause has also been applied to cases involving the taxation of imported goods stored in customs-bonded warehouses, such as R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Durham County.
While the Import-Export Clause does not directly address the issue of slavery, it is important to note that the Constitutional Convention and the US Constitution as a whole did grapple with the issue. The Three-Fifths Clause, for example, counted three-fifths of a state's slave population in apportioning representation, giving Southern states extra representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College.
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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. It requires that a "Person held to Service or Labour" (usually a slave, apprentice, or indentured servant) who flees to another state must be returned to their master in the state from which they escaped. The clause was adopted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and remained in effect until the abolition of slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment, which rendered it unenforceable.
The Fugitive Slave Clause gave slaveholders the right to reclaim their "property" across state lines. It formed the basis for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which allowed slaveholders to capture enslaved persons who had run away. 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 enslaved persons and required all states, whether slaveholding or not, to return escaped slaves to their owners.
The Fugitive Slave Clause was a compromise between the Northern and Southern states, which had differing views on slavery. By the late 19th century, most Northern states did not allow slavery, while most Southern states relied heavily on the practice. The Clause was intended to make it clear that slavery existed only under state law, not federal law. The words "slave" and "slavery" are notably absent from the Clause, and a last-minute change was made to the wording, replacing "legally held to service or labour in one state" with "held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof". This revision prevented the Constitution from being interpreted as legally sanctioning slavery.
The Supreme Court's interpretation of the Fugitive Slave Clause held that the owner of an enslaved person had the same right to seize and repossess them in another state as the local laws of their own state granted to them. State laws that penalised such a seizure were deemed unconstitutional, and states had no power to legislate on the subject. However, a state statute providing a penalty for harbouring an escaped slave was upheld because it did not affect the right of the slaveholder to reclaim their "property".
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Slave insurrections
The Constitution of the United States, specifically Article I, Section 2, also known as the Three-Fifths Clause, stated that for the purposes of representation in Congress, enslaved black people in a state would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state. This clause was enacted as a compromise during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which also included clauses prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territories and ending U.S. participation in the international slave trade in 1807.
While the word "slave" does not appear in the Constitution, slavery received important protections. The Three-Fifths Clause gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College, reflecting the compromise made by the framers of the Constitution to gain the support of southern delegates. This compromise, however, laid the foundation for future conflicts, as noted by Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice.
Now, turning to the topic of slave insurrections:
Slave rebellions and resistance were a means of opposing the oppressive system of chattel slavery in the United States. These rebellions took various forms, from small-scale individual acts of resistance to larger-scale organized uprisings. One form of resistance was self-emancipation, where enslaved people would escape their enslavers, sometimes only temporarily to take a break from their labor and disrupt the plantation system. This practice is known as petit marronage. The Great Dismal Swamp, located in Virginia and North Carolina, was a prominent refuge for escaped slaves, where they formed self-sustained communities.
Religion also played a role in resistance, with enslaved African American women using the Bible to critique slavery and gain social influence within their communities. Some slaves secretly learned to read and write, communicating important information through songs and prayer. Other acts of resistance included stealing food, committing arson, and fighting back against their oppressors.
Large-scale slave rebellions also occurred, such as the 1811 German Coast Uprising in present-day Louisiana, which was the largest slave uprising in the United States. In 1831, Nat Turner led a rebellion in Virginia, where a group of slaves went from house to house, killing white residents, and collecting more slaves along the way. This rebellion resulted in the deaths of 55 people and was met with a swift response, with Turner eventually being captured and the insurrection put down.
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The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments
The Thirteenth Amendment, proposed in 1864 and ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except for those duly convicted of a crime. This amendment was passed before the Civil War had ended, but once the war was over, white southerners passed laws, known as Black Codes, to prevent freedmen from exercising their rights.
The Fourteenth Amendment, proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law for all persons. This amendment was proposed in response to issues related to the treatment of freedmen following the war and was bitterly contested, especially by Southern states. It eliminated the three-fifths rule in Article I, Sec. 2, cl. 3, which had counted three-fifths of a state's slave population when apportioning representation, giving the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and Electoral College.
The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in 1869 and ratified in 1870, prohibits federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This amendment was passed to protect black voting rights, as when African Americans began exercising political power, they were targeted with violence and intimidation by white southerners and organizations like the Ku Klux Klan.
These amendments were essential to reuniting the United States during Reconstruction, and Confederate states were required to ratify the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to be readmitted to the Union. They provided the constitutional basis for enforcing and implementing Reconstruction and passing federal legislation such as the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 and the Enforcement Acts of 1870-71, which aimed to end slavery, ensure full citizenship, civil rights, and voting rights for freed African Americans, and address growing violence and intimidation against them in the South.
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Frequently asked questions
Yes, Black people were considered in the US Constitution, but only obliquely. The word "slave" does not appear in the Constitution, but the document included four clauses that indirectly addressed slavery and the slave trade.
The four clauses in the US Constitution that related to slavery were: the Three-Fifths Clause, the ban on Congress ending the slave trade for twenty years, the fugitive slave clause, and the slave insurrection clause.
The Three-Fifths Clause (Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution of 1787) declared that for purposes of representation in Congress, enslaved Black people in a state would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state.
This question is the subject of historical controversy. While some argue that the US Constitution strengthened slavery, others contend that it created a central government powerful enough to eventually abolish the institution.
The US Constitution's approach to slavery had far-reaching consequences. On the one hand, it avoided the use of the word "slave" and reflected the belief that slavery was morally wrong and would eventually die out. On the other hand, it gave important protections to slavery, including the Three-Fifths Clause, which gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College. The Constitution's failure to address slavery directly left a legacy of racial inequality and set the stage for future conflicts, including the Civil War.
