The Constitution and Slavery (Very Long)

I had to write this for a class and thought I'd share it. I rushed through it and I need to clean it up but I'm interested to read any responses of people who have the time or desire to read it:


Although the United States Constitution does not contain the words "slave" or "slavery", through euphemistic language its protection was certainly contained within the document. Many people throughout history including abolitionists Fredrick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison have lamented this fact. It even sparks controversy in our own time. A couple decades ago for the bicentennial celebration of the United States Constitution, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote that the “proud proclamations of the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice shared by the framers” were not deserved. He criticized the Constitution for not addressing the issue of slavery; writing that “the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, that we hold as fundamental today” (Marshall Nov., 1987). Although I understand Marshall’s sentiment, his assessment is weakened by the seeming inevitability he ascribes to the events following the Constitutional Convention. Furthermore, had the few anti-slavery demanded a constitution without these “defects” there might not have been a union of states at all.


Though a few delegates such as Rufus King of Massachusetts and Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania spoke out against slavery, the anti-slavery members did not possess the numbers nor the coordinated plan to influence the document to the degree the pro-slavery faction did. David O. Steward wrote in The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution, “for the southerners, no goal was greater than the protection of slavery” (Stewart 2007). And though Morris for example, vehemently spoke out against slavery and it’s entrenchment in the proposed government it was all for naught. In regards to the three-fifths compromise he declared “[T]he inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a government instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who views with a laudable horror so nefarious a practice.” Despite the eloquence of his speech, the motion only garnered one supporter, Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey. Eric Foner elaborated on this point writing, "South Carolina’s delegates had come to Philadelphia determined to defend slavery, and they had a powerful impact on the final document. They originated the fugitive slave clause, the three-fifths clause, and the Electoral College. They insisted on strict limits on the power of Congress to levy taxes within the states, fearing future efforts to raise revenue by taxing slave property. They threatened disunion if the Atlantic slave trade were prohibited immediately, as the New England states and Virginia, with its abundance of native-born slaves, demanded" (Foner 2011). At times delegates, even Southern ones, such as Luther Martin of Maryland questioned slavery’s place in the nascent republic. On August 21, he advocated the taxation on imported slaves or the outright abolition of the slave trade as it “was inconsistent with the principles of the revolution and dishonorable to the American character.” The South Carolinian John Rutledge immediately parried Martin’s proposal. In his typical pragmatic style he argued that Martin and the Northerners should step away from their moral qualms with the institution of slavery and embrace avaricious self-interest. With all the bluntness of realpolitik he exclaimed, “Interest alone is the governing principle with nations. The true question at present is whether the Southern states shall or shall not be parties to the Union. If the Northern States shall consult their interest, they will not oppose the increase of slaves which will increase the commodities of which they will become the carriers.”


Ultimately, the sporadic moral contentions of the disorganized few fell to the firm faction of Carolinian and Georgian planters. Catherine Drinker Bowen in the seminal Miracle at Philadelphia put it best when she wrote that the evil institution was “no part of the Convention's immediate problem” after all the framers did not meet to “reform society but to create a government for society as it existed.” (Bowen 1966) Slavery, though not explicitly, would become entrenched in this “Empire of Liberty” and that crime would not be “purged away but with blood.”

Works Cited
Bowen, Catherine Drinker. 1966. Miracle at Philadelphia. New York: Back Bay Books.

Foner, Eric. 2011. Give Me Liberty! New York: Norton.

Marshall, Thurgood. Nov., 1987. "Reflections on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution." Harvard Law Review, Vol. 101, No. 1 pp. 1-5.

Stewart, David O. 2007. The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution. New York: Simon and Schuster.