Simone Lawson
The inclusion of slavery in the US Constitution has been a highly controversial topic. The Constitution, which was ratified in 1787, did not include the word slave or slavery, but it did include several provisions that protected the institution of slavery, such as the Three-Fifths Compromise, which allocated Congressional representation based on a state's population of free Persons and three-fifths of all other Persons. This gave the South, where enslaved African Americans made up a large part of the population, extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College. While some members of the Constitutional Convention objected to slavery, others, like Stephen Douglas, believed that the people should decide whether or not to own slaves. The 13th Amendment, passed in 1865, officially abolished slavery in all states, but the legacy of slavery and its impact on the Constitution continue to be debated.
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What You'll Learn
The Three-Fifths Clause
The Three-Fifths Compromise was part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution. This clause allocated Congressional representation based on the "whole Number of free Persons" and "three-fifths of all other Persons". Representatives and direct taxes were to be apportioned among the states according to their respective numbers. This was determined by adding the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding untaxed Native Americans, plus three-fifths of all other persons.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was reached after proposed compromises of one-half and three-fourths failed to gain sufficient support. James Madison proposed the three-fifths ratio, which was finally adopted. In Federalist No. 54, Madison explained the reasoning for the three-fifths ratio:
> 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 population of enslaved individuals 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.
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The Missouri Compromise
The Compromise was passed by the 16th United States Congress on March 3, 1820, and signed into law by President James Monroe on March 6, 1820. It admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, ensuring that the balance between slave and free states in the nation was not upset. This balance was crucial, as it maintained the equal representation of slave-owning and non-slave-owning states in Congress.
In addition to the admission of Missouri and Maine, the Missouri Compromise also included a provision that prohibited slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36°30′ parallel, which was the southern border of Missouri. This provision was added by Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois and was a significant component of the Compromise.
While the Missouri Compromise provided a temporary solution to the controversy over slavery, it failed to resolve the underlying issue. Southerners opposed the Compromise because it set a precedent for Congress to make laws concerning slavery, while Northerners were unhappy that slavery was expanding into new territories. The Compromise also sowed the seeds of the Civil War, as Thomas Jefferson predicted that the line drawn between the North and South would eventually tear the Union apart.
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The Fugitive Slave Act
The 1793 Fugitive Slave Act authorized local governments and owners of enslaved people, or their "agents", to seize and return escapees to their owners. It imposed penalties on anyone who aided in the flight of a runaway slave. However, the law faced fierce resistance from many Northern states, which passed "Personal Liberty Laws" that gave accused runaway slaves the right to a jury trial and protected free Black people from being illegally captured and sold into slavery. The Supreme Court of the United States also ruled in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) that states did not have to offer aid in the hunting or recapture of enslaved people, significantly weakening the law.
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The Dred Scott Ruling
The Dred Scott case, also known as Dred Scott v. Sandford, was a decade-long fight for freedom by an enslaved Black man named Dred Scott. In 1846, Scott and his wife, Harriet, sued for their freedom in a St. Louis court on the grounds that their residence in a free territory had freed them from the bonds of slavery. Scott had lived in a free state (Illinois) and free territory (Wisconsin) with his owner, an army physician, before returning with him to the slave state of Missouri.
Scott's case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 1857. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney read the majority opinion of the Court, which stated that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and therefore could not expect any protection from the federal government or the courts. The opinion also stated that Congress had no authority to ban slavery from a federal territory, and that the Missouri Compromise legislation was unconstitutional. This decision moved the nation a step closer to the Civil War.
The Dred Scott decision was greeted with widespread fury outside the slave-holding states and incensed abolitionists, giving momentum to the anti-slavery movement. It has been cited as the most egregious example of the Court wrongly imposing a judicial solution on a political problem. Charles Evans Hughes, a later chief justice, famously characterized the decision as the Court's great "self-inflicted wound".
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The Thirteenth Amendment
In the decades following the ratification of the Constitution, the issue of slavery became increasingly divisive, with the Northern states taking steps towards abolition while the Southern states resisted. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, for example, banned slavery in the northern part of the Louisiana Territory, contributing to the spread of liberty and equality. However, the Southern states continued to insist on racial hierarchy and the preservation of slavery. The tensions between the North and the South eventually led to the Civil War, which began in 1860 when South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed by several other Southern states.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all persons held as slaves within any state in rebellion against the United States "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." However, the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery nationwide, as it only applied to areas of the Confederacy in rebellion. It was the Thirteenth Amendment that finally abolished slavery in the United States, ensuring that abolition was beyond legal challenge.
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Frequently asked questions
The US Constitution did not expressly use the words "slave" or "slavery" but included several provisions about unfree persons. 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".
The Three-Fifths Compromise gave the South extra representation in the House of Representatives and extra votes in the Electoral College.
Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison claimed the Constitution was a "covenant with death and an agreement with Hell". Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the Supreme Court, said the Constitution was "defective from the start".
Abraham Lincoln contended that the American Founding and its Constitution put slavery "in the course of ultimate extinction".
On April 8, 1864, the Senate passed an amendment to abolish slavery. The House followed suit on January 31, 1865, and the measure was swiftly ratified by nearly all Northern states and a few border states. The 13th Amendment, which officially abolished slavery in all states, was adopted before the end of 1865.
