Slavery In The Constitution: A Historical Perspective

The topic of slavery in the US Constitution has been a subject of debate and controversy throughout US history. While the word slave does not appear in the Constitution, there are several clauses that have been interpreted as either pro-slavery or anti-slavery. The Three-Fifths Clause, Fugitive Slave Clause, and the Slave Trade Clause are some of the most well-known provisions related to slavery. The 13th Amendment, passed in 1865, explicitly abolished slavery and served as a final constitutional solution to the issue. The amendment stated that Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime... shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The debate over slavery and the Constitution reflects the complex and conflicting views of the Founding Fathers and the challenges of building a nation founded on liberty and equality while also grappling with the legacy of slavery.

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The 13th Amendment

The Constitution, prior to the 13th Amendment, was a subject of debate regarding its stance on slavery. Abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison, criticised the document as pro-slavery. Certain clauses, such as the Fugitive Slave Clause and the Three-Fifths Clause, have been interpreted as providing protections for slavery. On the other hand, some argue that the Constitution's grant of power to Congress to make rules for the territories and its assertion of fundamental human equality can be interpreted as anti-slavery. The framers of the Constitution deliberately avoided using direct language about slavery, which allowed for differing interpretations.

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" who escapes to another state must be returned to their master in the state from which they fled. The clause was adopted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and remained in effect until the abolition of slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment.

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."

It is important to note that the words "slave" and "slavery" are not used in this clause, although it is generally understood to refer to enslaved people. The vague wording of the clause has been the subject of debate among legal scholars, with some arguing that it avoided overtly validating slavery at the federal level, while others contend that it functionally entrenched slaveholder power.

The Fugitive Slave Clause formed the basis for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which gave slaveholders the right to capture and reclaim enslaved persons who had escaped to free states. The Act was strengthened in 1850, leading to increased resistance to its enforcement in the Northern states. Despite this resistance, the Supreme Court upheld the Fugitive Slave Clause and the Act, as in the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) and Ableman v. Booth (1859). However, following the Thirteenth Amendment's abolition of slavery, the clause became mostly irrelevant and unenforceable.

Slave Trade Clause

The Slave Trade Clause, also known as the Importation of Persons Clause, is found in Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution. This clause addressed the contentious issue of slavery during the drafting of the Constitution in 1787. At that time, slavery was deeply entrenched in the economic and social fabric of the United States, particularly in the Southern states.

The Slave Trade Clause stipulated that:

> "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 effectively sanctioned the importation of slaves by the states for 20 years after the adoption of the Constitution. It also allowed for a tax of up to $10 per person on the importation of slaves. The inclusion of this clause was a compromise between the Northern and Southern states, ensuring that the Southern states, which relied heavily on slavery, would join the Union.

The Slave Trade Clause did not explicitly mention the word "slavery" or "slaves," reflecting the drafters' reluctance to directly address the practice. However, it was understood to refer to the slave trade, and its inclusion had significant implications for the perpetuation of slavery in the United States.

The clause expired in 1808, and an act of Congress that year prohibited the importation of slaves into the United States. However, slavery itself and the domestic sale of slaves persisted, and the constitutional provisions related to slavery continued to shape the political and social landscape of the nation.

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Three-Fifths Compromise

The Three-Fifths Compromise was an agreement reached during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention. It was an attempt to resolve the issue of how to include slaves in counting a state's total population. This total population count would then 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.

The delegates from the Northern states sought to make representation dependent on the size of a state's free population. Southern delegates, on the other hand, threatened to abandon the convention if enslaved individuals were not counted. Eventually, the framers agreed on a compromise that called for representation in the House of Representatives to be apportioned on the basis of a state's free population plus three-fifths of its enslaved population. This agreement came to be known as the Three-Fifths Compromise.

The Three-Fifths Compromise is part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. It states:

> 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 the reasoning behind the ratio in Federalist No. 54, "The Apportionment of Members Among the States" (February 12, 1788). Madison wrote:

> We subscribe to the doctrine, might one of our Southern brethren observe, "that representation relates more immediately to persons, and taxation more immediately to property, and we join in the application of this distinction to the case of our slaves. But we must deny the fact, that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons.

The Three-Fifths Compromise gave slaveholding states the right to count three-fifths of their enslaved population when it came to apportioning representatives to Congress. This meant that those states were perpetually overrepresented in national politics. However, this same ratio was used to determine the federal tax contribution required of each state, thus increasing the direct federal tax burden of slaveholding states.

Abolition

The institution of slavery was protected by the US Constitution, despite the moral qualms of many of its framers. The Constitution's "biggest flaw" was that it protected slavery and institutionalised it, only protecting the rights of white men. The word "slave" does not appear in the Constitution, but slavery received important protections in the document.

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1, prohibited the federal government from limiting the importation of "persons" (understood at the time to mean enslaved African persons) where the existing state governments saw fit to allow it, until 20 years after the Constitution took effect. This was a compromise between Southern states, where slavery was pivotal to the economy, and states where the abolition of slavery had been accomplished or was contemplated.

The Three-Fifths Compromise, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, allocated Congressional representation based on "the whole Number of free Persons" and "three-fifths of all other Persons". This clause was a compromise between Southern politicians who wished for enslaved African-Americans to be counted as 'persons' for congressional representation and Northern politicians who rejected these ideas out of concern for too much power for the South. This gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College.

Article 4, Section 2, contains the "fugitive slave clause", which required that an escaped slave be returned to their owner.

The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, passed in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. This was the first of three Reconstruction Amendments that greatly expanded the civil rights of Americans.

The road to the 13th Amendment was not without its challenges. Lincoln recognised that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment to guarantee the abolishment of slavery. The House initially did not pass the bill, but Lincoln took an active role to ensure its passage through Congress, making it his top legislative priority. Lincoln urged Congress on in his December 6, 1864, State of the Union Address, and popular support for the amendment mounted. The House eventually passed the bill in January 1865, and it was ratified by the required number of states by December of that year.

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