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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