Page 182 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Watch the Video Slavery and the Constitution 6.1

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the cOnstitUtiOn The United States Constitution, seen here being signed by George Washington, is
considered by many scholars to be a “pro-slavery document” since its articles protected the international slave
trade through the “three-fifths clause.” This clause awarded states extra representation based on the number of
slaves in those states.
it would have otherwise received. As with most compromises, the one Franklin’s com-
mittee negotiated fully satisfied no one. It did, however, overcome a major impasse.
After the small states gained an assured voice in the upper house, the Senate, they
cooperated enthusiastically in creating a strong central government.
Despite these advances, in late August, a disturbing issue came before the convention.
It was a harbinger of the great sectional crisis of the nineteenth century. Many northern
representatives wanted to end the slave trade immediately. They despised the three-fifths
rule that seemed to award slaveholders extra power simply because they owned slaves. “It
seemed now to be pretty well understood,” Madison jotted in his private notes, “that the real
difference of interest lay, not between the large and small but between the N. and Southn.
States. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination.”
Whenever northern delegates—and on this point they were not united—pushed
too aggressively, southerners threatened to bolt the convention, thereby destroying any
hope of establishing a strong national government. Curiously, even recalcitrant south-
erners avoided using the word slavery. They seemed embarrassed to call the institution
by its true name. In the Constitution itself, slaves were described as “other persons,”
“such persons,” “persons held to Service or Labour,” everything but slaves.
A few northern delegates such as Roger Sherman sought to mollify the southerners,
especially the South Carolinians, who spoke passionately about preserving slavery. Gouver-
neur Morris, a Pennsylvania representative, would have none of it. He reminded the conven-
tion that “the inhabitant of Georgia and S.C. 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 con-
nections and damns them to the most cruel bondage, shall have more votes in a Government
instituted for the protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pa. or N. Jersey.”
Ignoring Morris’s attacks, the delegates reached an uneasy compromise on the
three-fifths rule Constitutional slave trade. Southerners feared that the new Congress would pass commercial regu-
provision that for every five
slaves a state would receive lations that hurt the planters—export taxes on rice and tobacco, for example. They
credit for three free voters in demanded a two-thirds majority of the federal legislature be required to pass trade laws.
determining seats for the House of They backed down on this point, however, in exchange for guarantees that Congress
Representatives. would not interfere with the slave trade until 1808 (see Chapter 8). The South even won
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