Isabella Carter
The US Constitution, a document that opens with a message of inclusivity, has a complex and paradoxical relationship with slavery. While the word slave is notably absent from the Constitution, the text contains several clauses that implicitly protect and promote slave ownership. The Three-Fifths Clause, for instance, counted three-fifths of a state's slave population towards representation, giving southern states with large slave populations greater political power. The Constitution also included a fugitive slave clause, requiring the return of runaway slaves to their owners, and prohibited Congress from outlawing the Atlantic slave trade for twenty years. These provisions, along with others, indicate that slavery was implicitly protected and perpetuated by the Constitution, despite the revolutionary ideals of fairness, justice, and individual rights that it espoused.
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What You'll Learn
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 how much money the states would pay in taxes.
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, free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, since those slaves had no voting rights. The 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. This effectively gave the Southern states more power in the House relative to the Northern states.
The three-fifths ratio was proposed by James Madison, who explained the reasoning behind it in Federalist No. 54, "The Apportionment of Members Among the States". Madison argued that slaves were not considered merely as property but also as persons. However, the Three-Fifths Compromise has been criticised for purportedly implying that slaves were considered less than fully human.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) later superseded this clause and explicitly repealed the compromise.
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Fugitive Slave Clause
The Fugitive Slave Clause, also known as the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labour Clause, was part of the United States Constitution. It was Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, which required a "Person held to Service or Labour" (usually a slave, apprentice, or indentured servant) who fled 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 as follows:
> 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 Fugitive Slave Clause was unanimously approved by the Convention without further debate, despite objections from James Wilson and Roger Sherman that this would oblige the executive of the State to seize fugitive slaves at public expense. The Articles of Confederation lacked an analogous provision, but the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which abolished slavery in the Territory, provided for the return of fugitive slaves who escaped there.
The enforcement provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 were strengthened as part of the Compromise of 1850. Under the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Fugitive Slave Clause, 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 penalized such a seizure were deemed unconstitutional.
The Fugitive Slave Clause was effectively nullified by the Thirteenth Amendment's abolition of slavery, except as a punishment for criminal acts. The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by the legislatures of 27 of the 36 states, including those that had been in rebellion, and became a part of the Constitution in December 1865.
The US Constitution and slavery have had a complex relationship, with many of the signers of the Constitution owning slaves and the number of slaves steadily growing through natural increase and slave imports from abroad. The framers of the Constitution believed that concessions on slavery were the price for the support of southern delegates for a strong central government, and sidestepped the issue of slavery, leaving the seeds for future conflict.
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Compromises on slavery
The U.S. Constitution has been called a "bundle of compromises" because delegates from 13 states had to find common ground on several key issues to create a government charter acceptable to all. One of the most contentious issues was slavery.
The delegates from Northern states, where the economy did not rely heavily on the enslavement of African people, believed that enslaved people should not be counted toward representation. They argued that counting them would give the South a greater number of representatives. On the other hand, Southern states, where slavery was expanding rapidly, fought for enslaved individuals to be counted in terms of representation. This was because they felt that the enslavement of African people was vital to their economy. The compromise, known as the Three-Fifths Compromise, stated that every five enslaved people would be counted as three individuals. This gave greater power to the Southern states, but Frederick Douglass believed it encouraged freedom because it gave "an increase of 'two-fifths' of political power to free over slave states."
Another compromise was struck regarding tariffs. Northern states wanted the government to be able to impose import tariffs on finished products to protect against foreign competition and encourage the South to buy goods made in the North. The Southern states wanted to export their products without any restrictions. The compromise mandated that tariffs were only allowed on imports from foreign countries and not exports from the U.S. This compromise also dictated that the federal government would regulate interstate commerce, and it required that all commerce legislation be passed by a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which was a win for the South as it countered the power of the more populous Northern states.
The issue of slavery was so contentious that it threatened to tear the Union apart during the Constitutional Convention. Some delegates considered slavery an evil institution and wanted to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade. However, delegates from South Carolina and Georgia angrily opposed any limitations on slavery, threatening to leave the convention and oppose its proposed plan for a stronger central government. As a result, the issue of slavery was treated as a political, rather than a moral, question. The delegates agreed that a strengthened union of the states was more important than the Revolutionary ideal of equality. This compromise allowed slavery to continue and expand, and it laid the foundation for the tragic events that would follow, including the Civil War.
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Thirteenth Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18.
The Thirteenth Amendment was the first of three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War. It was also the first of two ratified amendments to be signed by a President. The second being the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which was signed by Richard Nixon in 1971.
The Thirteenth Amendment states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The amendment was necessary because, prior to this, the United States Constitution did not expressly use the words slave or slavery but included several provisions about unfree persons. For example, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, known as the Three-Fifths Compromise, provided that three-fifths of each state's enslaved population would be counted for representation in Congress and for direct taxation among the states.
The Thirteenth Amendment has rarely been cited in case law, but it has been used to strike down peonage and some race-based discrimination as "badges and incidents of slavery". The amendment has also been invoked to empower Congress to make laws against modern forms of slavery, such as sex trafficking.
In 1863, during the Civil War, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all persons held as slaves within any state in rebellion against the United States were free. However, this proclamation did not end slavery in the nation since it only applied to areas of the Confederacy currently in rebellion and not even to the loyal “border states” that remained in the Union. Lincoln recognised that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment to guarantee the abolishment of slavery.
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The Founding Fathers and slavery
The Founding Fathers of the United States inherited a slaveholding society, with slavery protected by law in all 13 American colonies when they declared independence from Britain in 1776. The Founding Fathers' commitment to ideals of liberty and freedom, as well as their acknowledgement that slavery violated the natural rights of the enslaved, created a paradox that proved difficult to navigate.
Many of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin, owned slaves. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote a scathing attack on slavery, calling it a "cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty". In his notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson further described the institution of slavery as forcing "the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism" on slave owners and slaves alike. Despite this, Jefferson never personally freed his slaves and even fathered children with one of them, Sally Hemings.
The Founding Fathers' simultaneous commitment to private property rights, principles of limited government, and sectional harmony prevented them from taking a strong stance against slavery. They also had to consider the considerable investment of Southern Founders in slave-based staple agriculture, combined with their deep-seated racial prejudice. During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Founding Fathers once again demonstrated their commitment to maintaining the unity of the new United States by agreeing to a series of compromises on slavery. These included the Three-Fifths Compromise, which allowed slaveholding states to count three-fifths of their slave population for purposes of representation and taxation, and a 20-year ban on any restrictions on the Atlantic slave trade.
The issue of slavery eventually resulted in vast regional and political divides, with disputes between the northern and southern sections of the nation rising over slavery and the expansion of slavery in the Southwest. Despite the efforts of the Founding Fathers to maintain unity, the issue of slavery laid the foundation for the tragic events that would follow, including the Civil War.
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Frequently asked questions
No, the US Constitution did not explicitly legalise owning slaves. However, it did include several clauses that protected the practice of slavery.
The Fugitive Slave Clause required the return of runaway slaves to their owners. The Three-Fifths Clause in Article I, Section 2, meant that slaves were considered less than fully human and gave greater power to the southern states. The Fifth Amendment also became a legal basis for treating slaves as property.
The Founding Fathers had differing views on slavery. Some owned slaves, while others believed it was inconsistent with American values. The Founding Fathers avoided any specific mention of slavery in the Constitution, and some believed they were putting it in the course of ultimate extinction. However, by sidestepping the issue, they laid the seeds for future conflict.
The 13th Amendment, passed in 1865, officially abolished slavery in all states. The inclusion of the word "except" in the amendment, however, laid the foundation for a deeply entrenched system of African American incarceration and other racially biased policies.
