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How did the founding fathers deal with slavery at the constitutional convention?

Dec 03, 2008 by Aaron K | Posted in History

If you could tie in examples from The chapter of Ellis's Founding Brothers "The Silence" it would be fantastic!

Although it has become popular to blame the Founders for not facing up to the slavery issue, slavery was an immense issue during the convention. It impacted the debate of the Convention from three perspectives. One was property and the right of an individual to control their own property. Second was how the slaves would be considered within the country, as the property they were or as individuals to be counted to ascertain State voting positions in the new Congress. Finally there was the issue of slavery itself and how it was to be addressed.

Today we may find it distasteful but at the time of the Founding slaves were property. From a different perspective they were they result of capital investment of the owner. Prior to the constitution this included more than blacks due to the English practice of indentured servitude. Usually this covered those who had debt, which was paid off by one who purchased their services for a number of years. It could also include youth being sold to individuals who taught them a trade over a period of years. All of these could be considered as a version of slaves.

The blacks imported from Africa differed in two major aspects. First, they were already slaves when purchased on the Western shores of Africa. Slavers (primarily the Islamic terrorists of their times) captured these people and made them slaves. This is where the second difference also began, those they captured were not considered the slavers did not consider them equals. These blacks then entered the Americas as slaves and the idea that they were less than those Western Europeans was also easily assimilated into the culture, North as well as South.

Another thought about slaving cultures. Today people make a common mistake of believing that once a slave, always a slave. Certainly instances of this can be found but slaves were a form of business. As in later times of the industrialized societies resources could ‘wear out’ through use. Most slave societies had processes where slaves could earn money (the Romans for example) and if they accumulated enough they could purchase their own freedom. As well as being advantages to the slave it was also an advantage to the slave owner. The slave would usually accumulate enough to purchase freedom as they reached the latter period of their working lives. With the purchase of their freedom the slave owner had enough new funds to purchase a younger slave and at the same time no longer have responsibility for the older one. While this worked well in some cultures it didn’t work well in the Americas because the worth of a slave grew to very high values. Even so, there are not only instances of this occurring but there are also instances of former slaves purchasing slaves themselves.

In addition the incentive to maintain a slave society was not simply one of the plantations of the South. There those of the North who also profited from slavery. A significant part of the Northern based shipping trades, for example.

I mention these things to try and describe what the Founders were facing at the time of the Convention. It was not a matter of simply keeping slavery to placate the Southerners.

The War and independence had opened an opportunity not existing in the colonial world, that is, the King was the sovereign and because of that all property ultimately came under the King’s control if not outright ownership. Post revolution and the 1783 Treaty of Peace sovereignty was increasingly recognized as originating within the individual and that protected by the individual States. As such property was considered as an important part of individual freedom. Whether we like it or not today, slaves were property of those times and represented considerable investment.

In the forming of the new Constitution and its ensuing governmental federal structure the question of how states would hold power in that new government was of prime importance. Some proposed all votes be one per State (supporting the smaller States) and some wanted the number of votes to be defined by State relative to its population (such as freemen, or land owners and some wanted all who lived within the State including slaves). On June 11th Delegate Roger Sherman offered a new proposal that in the House the votes should be determined by the number of free individual in each State and that in the Senate each State should have one vote and no more. This was such a new idea that another month would pass before the question would come to the floor of the Convention again. Although new in the Convention this idea went back to 1776 when the Congress was preparing the Articles of Confederation. To say that this generated excitement is putting it quite mildly.

No here comes the kicker, Delegate Pierce Butler declared that money is power and the States should have weight in the government according to their wealth. Delegate Elbridge Gerry then (figuratively) dropped the fox in the hen house by offering the question, “What about slave? Blacks are property and are used to the southward as horse and cattle to the northward.” Delegate James Wilson moved that the ‘three-fifths rule (as proposed by the Confederation Congress of 1783) be adopted whereby the vote should be in proportion to the whole number of white and other free citizens and three-fifths of all other persons except Indians not paying taxes. Here is where the word slave permeated the convention but was never spoken in that ‘all other persons’ was indeed the slaves. This was no small thing because real power within the new federal government was being developed and the slaves played a major role in that development.

This compromise impacted the last area of slaves and in that through the trade and importation issues. Concern that the federal government having control of commerce between the States and foreign nations as well as between the several States worried many in that it could (in their minds) give power to the largest four States. As a compromise it was agreed that import tax on the head of each slave (although that word was not used) would not exceed ten dollars and that the importation of slaves would end in 1808. (21 years after ratification.) What this did in addition to the trade issue (although such words were not used in the Convention or Constitution) was to allow slaves to grow to maturity in that period, and for the slaving using States to prepare, and that subsequent to 1808 it would be anticipated that the federal government would move to begin the end of slavery. That such never happened is due in a significant degree to the changing worth of the slaves in the economy North as well as South.

My point to all of this is that the Founders saw the slave question as a major issue of their times, but ‘not’ in the context as people to day look at the issue.

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