Eleanor Finch
The United States Constitution, from its inception, was divided between states that allowed slavery and those that prohibited it. While the word slave does not appear in the Constitution, slavery received important protections in the form of three clauses: the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Clause, and the Importation Clause. The first apportioned representation in the House of Representatives and Electoral College votes based on three-fifths of a state's slave population, the second required the return of runaway slaves to their owners, and the third prevented Congress from banning the slave trade for 20 years. These clauses, along with the absence of explicit anti-slavery language in the Constitution, have sparked debates about the intentions of the Founding Fathers and the moral contradictions of slavery in a nation founded on individual rights and liberty.
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What You'll Learn
The Three-Fifths Clause
The Three-Fifths Compromise, also known as the Three-Fifths Clause, was a highly controversial 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 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. The Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise that 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 Compromise was part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the US Constitution, which stated that "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 proposed by James Madison, who explained that it was a compromise between those who saw slaves as property and those who saw them as persons.
The Three-Fifths Compromise had significant implications for the representation and taxation of slaveholding states. It gave slaveholding states the right to count three-fifths of their enslaved population when apportioning representatives to Congress, leading to those states being perpetually overrepresented in national politics. However, the same three-fifths ratio was also used to determine the federal tax contribution required of each state, increasing the direct federal tax burden of slaveholding states.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was controversial and contributed to rising tensions between the North and South. It was superseded and explicitly 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, is Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. It states that:
> 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 clause was adopted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It gave slaveholders the right to seize and reclaim enslaved people who had escaped to another state, even if that state had abolished slavery. This was based on the interpretation 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.
The Fugitive Slave Clause was unanimously approved by the Convention without further debate, despite objections from James Wilson and Roger Sherman, who argued that it would oblige the state executive to seize fugitive slaves at public expense. It was also noted that the Clause did not use the words "slave" and "slavery". Historian Donald Fehrenbacher believes that this was an intentional move to make it clear that slavery existed only under state law, not federal law.
The Fugitive Slave Clause was effectively nullified by the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. An attempt to repeal the Clause in 1864, during the Civil War, failed.
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Abolitionist movement
The abolitionist movement was an organised effort to end the practice of slavery in the United States. The campaign took place from about 1830 to 1870, mimicking tactics previously used by British abolitionists. The movement began as a religious campaign, inspired by the Second Great Awakening, a Protestant revival that encouraged the idea that all men are created equal. However, it soon became a controversial political issue that divided the country.
Many Americans, including free and formerly enslaved people, supported the abolitionist movement. Some of the most famous abolitionists were formerly enslaved people themselves, such as Frederick Douglass, who published a memoir titled 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave'. Other prominent abolitionists include William Lloyd Garrison, who founded the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and started the publication 'The Liberator'; Harriet Beecher Stowe, an author best known for her novel 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'; and Susan B. Anthony, an author, speaker, and women's rights activist.
Abolitionists saw slavery as an abomination and an affliction on the United States, and their goal was to completely eradicate slave ownership. They sent petitions to Congress, ran for political office, and distributed anti-slavery literature in the South. The divisiveness and animosity fuelled by the movement, along with other factors, eventually led to the Civil War and the end of slavery in America.
The first country to fully outlaw slavery was France in 1315, though it was later used in its colonies. Spain abolished slavery for indigenous people in 1542, and Japan has not allowed chattel slavery since 1590. The British abolitionist movement began in the late 18th century, and slavery was made illegal throughout the British Empire in 1807, though it was not until 1833 that existing slaves in British colonies were liberated.
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Civil War and emancipation
The American Civil War was fought between the North and the South, initially to prevent the secession of the Southern states and preserve the Union. However, sectional conflicts over slavery were a major cause of the war. On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that enslaved people in those states or parts of states still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, would be declared free.
The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious areas "are, and henceforward shall be free". It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery legal in the border states. The freedom it promised was contingent upon a Union military victory. Although the proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it transformed the character of the war. Every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom, and the proclamation allowed Black men to join the Union Army and Navy, with almost 200,000 fighting for the Union by the war's end.
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution, passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was the first of three Reconstruction Amendments following the Civil War. Lincoln's assassination meant that the amendment's approval came via his successor, President Andrew Johnson, who encouraged three "reconstructed" Southern states to agree, bringing the total to 27 states and leading to its adoption on December 6, 1865.
The Thirteenth Amendment ensured that abolition was beyond legal challenge, but the process of defining freedom continued long after the war. The amendment has rarely been cited in case law but has been used to strike down race-based discrimination and empower Congress to make laws against modern forms of slavery.
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Thirteenth Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery and prohibited involuntary servitude in the United States and its territories, with one notable exception. This exception clause, which has been the subject of much debate, allows for involuntary servitude as a punishment for crimes.
The exact wording of the exception is: "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." This exception has been linked by scholars, activists, and prisoners to the rise of a prison system that disproportionately incarcerates Black people and profits from their labour.
The Thirteenth Amendment abrogated sections of the Constitution that had implicitly recognised and codified slavery. These included Article I, Section 2, which included the Three-Fifths Compromise, regarding the apportionment of representation in the House of Representatives; Article I, Section 9, which established 1807 as the end date for the importation of slaves; and Article IV, Section 2, the fugitive slave clause, which mandated the return of fugitive slaves to their owners.
While the words "slavery" and "slave" are never explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment ensured the abolition of the institution of slavery in the United States. The amendment passed in Congress during the Civil War and was ratified after the war ended, making emancipation a national policy.
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Frequently asked questions
No, the word 'slave' does not appear in the US Constitution. The framers avoided using the word, but the document did include several provisions about unfree persons.
The US Constitution implicitly recognised slavery and included provisions that protected the institution of slavery. For example, the Three-Fifths Clause 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 Fugitive Slave Clause, located in Article IV, Section 2, stated that a slave who was bound by the laws of their home state remained a slave even if they fled to a non-slavery state.
On September 22, 1862, in the midst of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all 3.5 million African American slaves living in the secessionist Southern states. The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, passed on January 31, 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
