Download Slavery and The Constitutional Convention

Slavery and The Constitutional Convention
On May 14, 1787, fifty-five delegates from the newly formed United States
gathered in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, and ended up
restructuring the government by drafting a new Constitution. In doing so, the
architects of the Constitution had to confront the contradiction of establishing a
government based upon liberty and freedom in a country that allowed slavery.
1
2
Though the Constitution does not mention slavery, it was undeniable that the
issue stood at the heart of these debates. Slavery underlined the issues of
representation and taxation and the distribution of power amongst the states.
Twenty-five of the fifty-five delegates themselves owned slaves. Delegates
often considered slaves as both property and people when it was convenient to
their argument. Consequently, delegates agreed to the Three-Fifths
Compromise, which officially counted each slave as three-fifths of a human
being. This meant that three-fifths of the number of slaves in any state would
count toward a state’s number of congressmen, and three-fifths of them would
count toward how much in taxes a state would have to pay. Slaves were not
granted three-fifths of the vote, or any vote at all. In other words, slave states
would get extra representation in Congress for their slaves, even though those
slaves were still treated purely as property. In another agreement, Northern and
Southern delegates decided to grant Congress the power to end the slave trade
starting in 1808. However, the delegates also agreed to include the nation’s
first fugitive slave measure, stipulating that every runaway slave must be
returned to his or her owner. These men were aware of the contradictions in the
newly constructed document. Some delegates even suggested that allowing the
Constitution to sanction slavery invited divine judgment on the new nation.
However, despite the obvious compromises, Benjamin Franklin urged
delegates to ratify the Constitution because he doubted “whether any other
Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution.”1 The
delegates left it up to later generations to solve this problem. Little did they
know that sacrificing slaves in their efforts to create “a more perfect union” in
1787 would sow the seeds of the violent disunion of the new constitutional
republic in 1861.
1
Signing of the Constitution of the United States by Howard Chandler Christy
2
Portrait of James Madison
1 Slavery and The Constitutional Convention
Credits:
Finkelman, Paul. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. New
York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001.
Waldstreicher, David. Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification. New York:
Macmillan, 2010.
Grade Level Content Expectations:
Grade 8
• Describe how major issues debated at the Constitutional Convention such as
disagreements over the distribution of political power, rights of individuals, rights of
states, election of the executive, and slavery help explain the Civil War.
Questions:
1. What was the major contradiction that confronted the architects of the U.S. Constitution?
2. How did Northern and Southern delegates compromise on the issue of slavery?
3. Why did Benjamin Franklin urge fellow delegates to ratify the Constitution?
Links to Internet Websites:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/continental/constit.html
http://thewright.org/explore/blog/entry/voices-of-the-civil-war-episode-1-the-original-sin-part-1
Visual Resources
Voices of the Civil War Episode 1: “The Original Sin”
Voices of the Civil War Episode 2: “Banneker’s Letter”
2 Slavery and The Constitutional Convention
Courtesy of the Architects of the Capitol
For four months, 55 delegates met in Philadelphia to frame a Constitution for a federal republic
that would last into “remote futurity.” George Washington was unanimously elected president of
the Constitutional Convention, and the delegates signed the final version of the document on
September 17, 1787. On the controversial issue of slavery, which split the North from the South,
the delegates reached a number of compromises that nevertheless did little to prevent the
continued exploitation of slave labor.
3 Slavery and The Constitutional Convention
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Before James Madison became the 4th President of the United States, he was a Virginia delegate
to the Constitutional Convention, promoting his vision of a robust but balanced federal
government. Because of his actions at the Convention, he would become known as “the father of
the Constitution.” Born into a slaveholding family in 1751, he was familiar with the
contradiction between slavery and freedom in his personal life. Upon selling one of his own
slaves in 1783, he asked his father why the slave should be punished “for coveting that liberty for
which we have paid the price of so much blood, and have proclaimed so often to be right, and
worthy the pursuit, of every human being?”
4