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INSTITUTIONAL SLAVERY & 1787 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.
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Examines relationship of slavery issue to political decisions made at Convention. Overview of slavery in late 1780s; debates over issue at Convention. The Great Compromise. Ban on international slave trade. View of Abolitionists.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines relationship of slavery issue to political decisions made at Convention. Overview of slavery in late 1780s; debates over issue at Convention. The Great Compromise. Ban on international slave trade. View of Abolitionists.
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SLAVERY AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1787
This research paper examines the relationship between the issue of slavery and the political decisions made at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The institution of slavery of blacks (African Americans) in the original colonies which made up the new union was left intact as a result of the Constitutional Convention and in some important respects its constitutional status was buttressed. At the same time, partial limitations were placed on its spread by the constitutional phased in abolition of the importation of slaves into the United States and the contemporaneous Congressional ban on its spread into the Northwest Territory. These seemingly contradictory political decisions arose out of the dynamics of the debates at the Constitutional Convention which reflected conflicts between
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Slavery, Revolutionary America And the New Nation. He said "while from the standpoint of the North the Ordinanceappeared an antislavery triumph, to the South it may have seemed the end ofthe national government's attempt to prohibit slavery south of the Ohio"(Lynd 36 -361). The voters would elect the lower house,the state legislatures the upper one. New York: Crown, 1987.Rossiter, Clinton. Economic factors helped weaken northernresolve. In late August, Pierce Butlerof South Carolina proposed that the Constitution contain a clause requiringall states to return fugitive slaves which was adopted without opposition. The 3/5's rule had first beenproposed in the old Congress as the basis for levying taxes on the statesin 1783 but had never been adopted. "The Ambivalence of Freedom: Whites, Blacks, and the Coming of the American Revolution in the South." Slavery, Revolutionary America And the New Nation. Under this system, powerwas concentrated in the separate state legislatures which left insufficientscope for the functioning of an effective national government. Madison proposed to break the impasse by having the House elected bya popular vote in which slaves and free inhabitants would be countedequally and the Senate would be elected popularly by free inhabitants only,thus balancing the interests of North and South. NewEnglanders, involved in the 'carrying trade,' would profit fromtransporting rice and other products produced by slave labor. New York: Macmillan, 2d ed., 1935.Bowen, Catherine Drinker. . Works CitedBeard, Charles. New Haven: Yale U P, 1913.Finklestein, Paul, "Introduction." Slavery, Revolutionary America And the New Nation. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1998.Cohen, William. Meanwhile, South Carolina and Georgiahardened their positions, arguing that 1 percent of slaves should becounted. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2 .Farrand, Max. Ed. "The Compromise of 1787." Slavery, Revolutionary America And the New Nation. George Mason of Virginia, an abolitionist, gave afiery speech condemning the slave trade, which Morris of Pennsylvaniareinforced. A More Perfect Union The Making of the United States Constitution. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1998.----------------------- 16 New England would supportthe right of the Carolinas and Georgia to import the slaves they could not'do without'" (Slavery And the Constitutional 89). New York: Book-of-the- Month Club, 1986.Bradley, Patricia. Overall Assessment Abolitionists in the 19th century condemned the Constitution and thework of the Philadelphia Convention as the product of racism. (Finklestein Slavery and the Constitutional 71). Paul Finklestein. In the ensuing debate, Sherman opposedMorris' attempt to reraise the issue of the 3/5's clause, arguing thatalthough slavery was 'iniquitous,' the matter had already been decided andthat in any event slavery, if left alone, would probably die out of its ownaccord. were concernedfar less about the rights of blacks than to see that the South would notdominate any new Congress that came out of the Constitution" (15 ). The Great Compromise On June 3 , Madison correctly surmised that the conflict between thelarger and smaller states was turning into a conflict between the freestates of the North and the slave states of the South. But, few in the South were willingto take steps to end slavery" (Introduction xi). New Jersey's William Pattersonargued that it was inconsistent to count slaves for federal voting purposeswhen they were not allowed to vote in their own states and said adoption ofthe 3/5's rule would promote the international slave trade. In 1764 patriot James Otis of Boston pointed outthe logical inconsistency of opposing British tyranny and oppressingblacks. . Connecticutsupported the 3/5's clause. Most of the founding fathers had little regard for the enslavedblacks either at the time the Declaration of Independence declared that'all men are created equal' or in 1787. From Slavery to Freedom A History of African Americans. Quarrels erupted incommittees over attempts to allocate delegates between Northern andSouthern states to the first Congress. . However,Franklin and Moss said "the majority of the articulate colonists paidlittle attention to slavery" (86). When Delawarethreatened to walk out of the Convention over the issue of one state=onevote in Congress, the Convention referred the entire matter ofrepresentation in Congress to a Committee of the Whole. SLAVERY AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1787 This research paper examines the relationship between the issue ofslavery and the political decisions made at the Constitutional Conventionof 1787. The smaller states,"continued to express fear that they would be swallowed up by larger statesif representation in Congress were based solely on population" (FinklesteinSlavery And the Constitutional 72). Collier and Collier noted that "northerners . The resulthad been inadequate state contributions to permit retirement of the large(about $76 million) public debt resulting from the Revolutionary War,inflation, interstate trade disputes and civil disorders such as Shay'sRebellion in Massachusetts in 1786. Jefferson and others were successful inenacting the first manumission law in Virginia and in 1778 in banningfurther importation of slaves into Virginia from abroad, but Jefferson didnothing else to advance the cause of blacks. A complicated series of political bargains resulted in the eventualacceptance on July 19 of the Great Compromise under which the 3/5's rulefor purposes of representation and taxation in the House was acceptedtogether with the one state one vote indirect election of the Senate by thestate legislatures. Slavery in America in the Late 178 s Small numbers of blacks accompanied the first Spanish and laterFrench explorers of North America. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1997.Smith, Mark C. New England as well as Pennsylvania produced many of the earliestadvocates of abolition. Nevertheless, most Northern states after the war enacted legislationproviding for gradual emancipation of the slaves in their midst, includingPennsylvania in 178 , Massachusetts (by the courts in 1783), Connecticutand Rhode Island in 1784 and New Jersey and New York a little later.Franklin and Moss said "manumission [voluntary freeing of slaves by theirmasters) and antislavery societies became more widespread after the war"(88). Jefferson in hiswritings consistently held that slavery was unjust and immoral. . However, the Convention soon fell into a deadlock over the wholeidea of proportional representation as the basis for the election ofCongress. Franklin and Moss said the number of blackslaves in Virginia increased from 12, in 17 8 to 12 , in 1756 (66). New York: Knopf, 8th ed. "Slavery and the Constitutional Convention Making a Covenant with Death." Slavery, Revolutionary America And the New Nation. In the North, during the debate of July 9-13, speaker afterspeaker raised objections to the 3/5's rule. In summing up American attitudes toward slavery in the 178 s,Froehling said "the master passion of the age was not extending liberty toblacks but with erecting republics for whites" (129). As Beard pointed out, these developmenthad generated in the Northern and the Southern propertied classes "a spiritof nationalism" founded on a determination to strengthen the nationalgovernment and its executive power (29). Ed. At the same time, partial limitationswere placed on its spread by the constitutional phased in abolition of theimportation of slaves into the United States and the contemporaneousCongressional ban on its spread into the Northwest Territory. Martin's Griffin, 1998.Peters, William. . Quakers and pastors ofseveral Protestant sects, such as the Congregationalists, Methodists andBaptists, primarily in the North but also in the South, took up theabolitionist cause during and after the Revolutionary War. Due principally to the nature of their economies, in theMiddle Atlantic states, such as Pennsylvania, "slavery was never reallysuccessful" (Franklin and Moss 75). Since many of the delegates to the Convention were membersof Congress and because of the fact that the Great Compromise and finalagreement on the wording of the Northwest Territories Ordinance occurred inmid-July 1787, Lynd strongly suggested that the two were inseparablyinterrelated and that one could have not occurred without the other.Farrand argued in 1913 that "in the first stages of the discussion onproportional representation the conflicting interests of east and west weremore important than those between slave and free states" (1 8). Free In The World American Slavery And Constitutional Failure. The Committee on Detail which addressed thoseissues was composed of five members, including two from the South, JohnRutledge of South Carolina and Randolph from Virginia and three from theNorth. In the South, 32,357 were free and 657,527 were slaves, where thelatter accounted for 57 percent of the value of Southern wealth (Sisson3 ). New York: Garland, 1989. About 1/2 of them werecollege graduates, a relative rarity at the time. Blacks fought against theBritish during the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. The cost of compensating slaveowners for emancipation was farbeyond the capacity of governments which could then not even pay theirdebts. 6 -97.Finkleman, Paul (ed.). The men who devised the political compromises at the Conventionbelieved they were necessary to preserve the then fragile Union and tocreate a structure of government strong enough to face the ordeals whichlay ahead. TheConnecticut delegation, Randolph, Rufus King of Massachusetts and othercentrist delegates worked behind the scenes to bring about a compromise.Finklestein said Connecticut and at times Massachusetts cooperated with theSouth on these trade issues for reasons which "were now clear. Higgins said "southern whites investedenormous sums in bound workers and reaped great returns from slave labor .. New York: Garland, 1989.Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. By June 3 the Convention was at a standstill" (Slaveryand the Constitutional 71). In the latter, itquickly became apparent that the willingness of South Carolina and Georgiato accept proportional representation in Congress was dependent on 3/5's ofall black slaves in the South being counted. Rossiter said "thosewho criticize the Framers for not acting boldly in this matter [slavery]see them as men they never were . 2 .Higgins, W. Ed. the British slave trade tripled in sizecompared to the four decades before 17 " (38). Perhaps the most schizophrenic state on the subject was Virginia.Finklestein said "many of the new nation's slaveholding leaders such asGeorge Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry expressed theiranguish over the existence of slavery. SouthCarolina remained adamantly opposed to any relaxation in its strict blackcodes or to any ban on the importation of slaves and opposed any attempt bythe North to tamper with slavery. Ban on International Slave Trade and Other Slavery-Related Issues Roger Sherman and other members of the Connecticut delegation playeda key role in shaping the Great Compromise and other negotiations onslavery-related issues at the Convention in July and August. The Virginia Plan was the creation of the three most populous states,Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, which then possessed 45 percentof the population. . New York: Garland, 1989. Slavery, Propaganda, And the American Revolution. 1787-1829 The Gathering Storm. Decision at Philadelphia. The South was, however, opposed togranting Congress the power to impose taxes on exports, such as on its bulkagricultural commodities, or on the importation of slaves. As Bowen put it, "thata large part of America rested upon slavery was again no part of theConvention's immediate problem; they were met not to reform society but tocreate a government for society as it existed" (72). . An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. A black sailor and runaway slave, Crispus Atticus, was the firstperson killed in the Boston Massacre of 177 . The Convention, however,ignored Madison's proposal. All this was, of course, true from the vantage point of later moralstandards. In addition,most of the Northern states wished to end the international slave trade,which had been unpopular north of the Carolinas since the RevolutionaryWar. . The Framers placed their faith in the future amelioration ofpublic attitudes and set some outer limits on the spread of slavery. In her analysis of patriot propaganda,Bradley points out that for most whites, blacks were believed and wereoften depicted in the patriotic press as possessing "an innate nature thatwas libidinous, immoderate, and prone to crime" (7). The 55 delegates, all white males, at the Philadelphia Conventionoverwhelmingly represented propertied interests. By 1787, over 7 , blacks resided in the territory of the originalcolonies, 9 per cent of them in the South, and made up about 2 percent ofthe entire population (Collier and Collier 22-23). Moss, Jr. Ed. The national legislature would bevested with the power to override state legislation it deemed incompetent.A strong executive would be created with powers to veto Congressionallegislation and national courts. .are inferior to whites in the endowments of both body and mind" (Cohen 45).He said that free blacks and whites could not exist peacefully andtherefore advocated schemes for colonization of the former slaves in WestAfrica or elsewhere abroad. Although free blackswere later allowed to enlist as soldiers in the North, a Council of Warunder George Washington decided in July 1775 to bar all blacks from theContinental Army on the grounds that their loyalty was suspect. New York: Garland, 1989. In the South,Smith said the growing reliance on profitable staple crops such as tobacco,rice and indigo "served to inspire and subsequently entrench race-basedslavery" (3). Theseseemingly contradictory political decisions arose out of the dynamics ofthe debates at the Constitutional Convention which reflected conflictsbetween the larger and smaller states over the powers of the new centralgovernment, the competing economic interests of different sections of thecountry and of the dominant property-owning elites represented inPhiladelphia and the prevailing attitudes of most white Americans towardblacks and slavery. Virginia supported the ending of the international slavetrade, which had been opposed by most of the colonists as a Britishmonopoly, because the decline in tobacco plantation farming and the naturalincrease of the slave population ended the need for further imports ofslaves and because a cessation of imports increased the prices at whichVirginia could sell its surplus of slaves to the Deep South where they wereneeded to work on rice and indigo plantations and, after the invention ofthe cotton gin in 1793, in cotton fields throughout the Deep South. North and South were weighing the consequencesof counting slaves in determining representation. Paul Finklestein. Paul Finklestein. The abolition of slavery was never a realistic possibility in 1787.As men of property, even the most vocal opponents of slavery at theConvention, such as Morris and Mason, believed in the protection of privateproperty. New York: Garland, 1989, 245-265.Lynd, Staughton. freedom for blacks would upset the agricultural and economic systemdeveloped over the previous one hundred years" (247). The delegate from Connecticut, Oliver Ellsworth, consistentlysupported the position of the South. 353- 378.Mayer, Henry. South Carolina repeated its threats to reject the newConstitution if any barriers were placed on the importation of slaves. The trans-Atlantic slave trade to NorthAmerica reached its apogee in the first half of the 18th century. Debating Slavery Economy and Society in the Antebellum American South. Decision in Philadelphia The Constitutional Convention of 1787. The political system they devised did notprove strong enough to resolve peacefully the sectional divide overslavery, but it did endure, leaving the intractable problem of slavery forfuture generations to resolve. On June 15 New Jersey proposed on behalf of the smaller NewEngland and Middle Atlantic states the New Jersey Plan under which popularsoveriengty and national power would be substantially diluted. The institution of slavery of blacks (African Americans) in theoriginal colonies which made up the new union was left intact as a resultof the Constitutional Convention and in some important respects itsconstitutional status was buttressed. In New England, the same was true,except that, as Franklin and Moss pointed out, "up until the War forIndependence the slave trade was vital to the economic life of NewEngland," because of the involvement in it of Yankee merchants and shippers(76). most ofthem came from families with respectable, if not substantial means" (24).According to Rossiter, 25 of the delegates owned slaves, including some ofits most influential members, such as Washington, who presided over theproceedings, and James Madison, the Constitution's principal draftsman(143). All on Fire William Lloyd Garrison And The Abolition of Slavery. The South's calculation at the time (which turned out to beincorrect) was that if at least 3/5's of the slaves were counted, the Southwould always control the House of Representatives because more people wouldflow into the western territories adjacent to the South than those abuttingthe North. The inherent superiority of whitesover other races was taken for granted at the time. . He told theConvention: the States were divided into different interests not by their difference in size, but by other circumstances; the most material of which resulted partly from climate, but principally from their having or not having slaves. The Framers were not particularly proud of the compromises they madeconcerning slavery, as evidenced by the extraordinary lengths to which theywent to avoid using the word 'slavery' in the Constitution itself. . What had occurred was the development of a coalition betweenConnecticut and the Deep South on trade issues, the necessary consequenceof which was that Connecticut broke with most of the other Northern stateson slavery-related issues. In the South, the Revolutionary War had an unsettling effect onslavery, producing many escaped slaves and chaotic conditions especiallyduring the latter years of the war when most of the fighting was in theSouth. Paul Finklestein. Under the Virginia Plan which was presented to the Convention in lateMay, 1787 by Virginia's Governor Edmund Randolph, the Congress under thenew Constitution was to consist of a lower and an upper house, which wouldbe elected in accordance with the numbers of free inhabitants or"proportional to the Quotas of contributions" of the states (FinklemanSlavery and the Constitutional 67). "Thomas Jefferson and The Problem of Slavery." Slavery, Revolutionary America And the New Nation. Robert. While the Great Compromise was being shaped, Congress put the finaltouches on the Northwest Territories Ordinance of 1787 which banned theextension of slavery or indentured servitude to that region. The Framing of the Constitution of the United States. He helped draft a morerestrictive black code in Virginia. On June 11, with James Wilson ofPennsylvania and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina as its sponsors, the3/5's rule was adopted by the Convention as the basis for representation inthe House. . Paul Finklestein. It quickly became apparent that most of the smallerstates, which outnumbered the larger ones, while in favor of a strongernational government, were not about to be stampeded into approving theprinciple of proportional representation in Congress. In1844, William Lloyd Garrison said the design of the framers was to achieve"union at the expense of the colored population of the country" (Mayer324). New York: Random House, 1986.Eltis, Davis. New York: Macmillan, 1966.Sisson, May Barr. Lynd theorizedthat the South, which dominated Congress at the time, never had much hopeof spreading slavery north of the Ohio River, but looked upon the NorthwestTerritories Ordinance as a tacit admission that slavery was legal south ofthat line and facilitated the early admission of new states in the westernterritories. That fearwas further stoked by the invitation of British Governor of Virginia LordDunsmore in November 1775 to free any slaves who supported the Britishcause. Ed. First Round of Debates in the Convention The Constitutional Convention was invoked because of the perceivedweaknesses of the system of government created under the Articles ofConfederation of 1783. The largest black populations were in Virginia (292,627), SouthCarolina (1 7, 94), Maryland (1 3, 36) and North Carolina (1 ,763)(Franklin and Moss 98). In the end, the finalcompromise was that the international slave trade was allowed to continueuntil 18 8 after which it was to cease; Congress could regulate interstatecommerce; but no taxes could be imposed on exports or imports, except anominal $1 per head tax on imported slaves. Elbridge Gerryof Massachusetts suggested that if slaves were to be counted forrepresentation purposes, why not horses and cattle? Governor Morrisof Pennsylvania emerged as an outright opponent of slavery. According toFinklestein, "for the next 15 days the convention debated, without anyreference to slavery, whether representation in Congress would be based onpopulation . Its expansion was spurredby the growth of the English plantation system in the West Indies and inthe American South and the need perceived by the colonists for cheap,manual agricultural labor. xi-xvi.Finklestein, Paul. . The intensity of opposition raised by the Deep South to anymeasures to interfere with slavery was not met with an equivalent intensityof conviction in the North. FrederickDouglass called the Constitution a "covenant with death" (Brandon 55). Slavery was embedded inthe economy and social structure. In terms of wealth, 16 were born aristocrats . --audacious heralds of a socialrevolution rather than as men they were-- prudent builders of a nation"(268). To pay his debts, he sold some of hisown slaves and never freed the rest, such as, for example, Washington didafter his death. Theydid not foresee that slavery would become even more deeply entrenched inthe South in the ensuing decades. Each of the states was equally represented in theCongress which was elected by state legislatures. And the SouthCarolinians seemed willing to support New England's demands for givingCongress the power to regulate all commerce . In the North,significant numbers of colonists disliked slavery, but Collier and Colliersaid many of them opposed slavery "not always for humanitarian reasons,"but because of "fear of low wage competition" and their belief that "thehorde of blacks in the South was a threat to the Union as a whole" (141). Perhaps,but by the time of the debates in mid-July, as Madison had correctlyperceived, northern opposition to the 3/5's rule, while insufficient toprevail, reflected concern that under it the South would gain control ofCongress. 1787 The Grand Convention. Accordingto Eltis, "after 17 . The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. In the North, accordingto the 179 census, 31, 8 of the Africans were free and 49,257 wereslaves. South Carolina issued the first of aseries of threats to walk out if slaves were not counted. . New York: Garland, 1989.Collier, Christopher, and James Lincoln Collier. New York: St. According to Peters,"most were planters or large-scale farmers, lawyers, merchants, or stateofficeholders. The Revolutionary War and its aftermath had significant effects onthe institution and the attitudes of Americans toward it. He,however, also said in his Notes on the State of Virginia that "blacks . Jackson: U P of Mississippi, 1998.Brandon, Mark E. Luther Martin of Delaware proposed that an import tax be placed on theimportation of slaves. . South Carolina, North Carolina and George Mason of theVirginia delegation, a strong advocate of states' rights, led the fightagainst the direct election of the President, which led to the adoption bythe Convention on July 23 of Madison's proposal that the President beelected by an electoral college which would be elected by the statelegislatures and in which the 3/5's rule would apply. The Northern states wanted to give the federalgovernment the power to regulate interstate commerce, so that they couldbenefit from internal improvements.
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