the constitution and slavery essay

the constitution and slavery essay

The Constitution and Slavery

1. Introduction

The manner in which the subject has been usually approached has not, it seems to me, been altogether fortunate. There has been an inclination, evidenced in both Northern and Southern writers, to read history backwards. That is to say, the facts and traditions of the Civil War have been taken as a starting point, and in the light of these facts, the Constitution has been interpreted. It is my earnest conviction that the Civil War can be understood only in the light of the antecedent history; and that the period which we may cover under the convenient phrase ‘The Slavery Controversy’ is the necessary introduction to the war. Economic changes, and more especially changes in industrial organization, are, it is true for the most part very gradual. But in the history of every society, there are certain critical periods in which the economic structure is subject to well-marked dislocation. Such a period is usually inaugurated by the introduction of some new engine of production; and alongside the political history in its more obvious aspect, there is always to be traced at such a time a struggle of classes, or of sections of classes, concerning the readjustment of the economic system to the new conditions. Now it is an undeniable fact that the period in question saw a great economic revolution in the Southern States of the Union, and the spectacle of the struggle which went on in that society is full of interest and instruction for the historical sociologist.

The object of this essay is to set forth the trend of the several clauses in the Constitution of the United States which touch upon the question of slavery. Whether these clauses were intended to be favorable to the abolition of slavery, or to its extension and perpetuation, is a subject which has been and continues to be hotly debated. It is not to stimulate a futile controversy, nor to reopen old sores, that I approach this subject; rather, it is my hope to afford a contribution, however small, to the philosophy of history. It would be idle for me to obtrude my own opinion concerning a question of contemporary politics upon the reader. All that I can do, and all that I intend to do, is to marshal the facts and arguments upon the two sides of this question, as fairly and as clearly as my ability will permit. If I have been successful, he who reads this essay should better understand both the Constitution and the times in which it was framed in their bearing upon the present issue. For a better understanding of the times will surely not detract from our admiration of the men who, in a great crisis, solved with courage and sagacity problems which have handed down to us their hard conceptions and decisions.

2. Slavery in the United States

Not so clear was it that Congressional power to suppress the foreign slave trade carried with it power to suppress the internal slave trade between the states. The denial of the right to prohibit or tax such importation until the year 1808 can indeed be interpreted only as a recognition of the right to take such action at a later date; but that it was so interpreted by Southerners in after years is unlikely. They had in view free trade to the Mississippi, and only the forces of economic history which by portage and river-development have ever been adverse to carrying large goods prevented this from becoming the settled policy of the Union. The obstacle was the exclusion of slavery from the North West Territories, whereby, as Jefferson was quick to see, the Ordinance had set up an economic unity and an idea; an economic unity continued by the Northern ordinance of restrictions on the Mississippi navigation, and temporarily shattered by no other one cause than the purchase of Louisiana. His dream of an independent Confederacy was never without its compensations.

The apparent satisfaction with which the old Union rejected proposal after proposal for a constitutional amendment recognizing the right of Congress to legislate on behalf of black slavery in the states must not be allowed to obscure the real difficulties felt by the Constitution-makers as to the place of slavery in the Union. That Congress should have power to suppress the foreign slave trade seems never to have been in question; and that the Constitution should prohibit action by Congress against the foreign slave trade for a period of twenty years was a concession on the part of the friends of the trade which not only shows that such action was feared, but that its prohibition was at that time so obvious a policy as to be accepted as a matter of course. And it must not be forgotten that this agreement was contemporaneous with the North West Ordinance, whereby, for vast territories, an identical twenty-year prohibition was established against any action unfavorable to that principle of common law, servitium non praescriptum, under cover of which in various forms, white men have also been made slaves.

3. The Constitution’s Position on Slavery

This issue hardly can be resolved by the usual canons of historical interpretation, for at stake is the concrete difference we today and our generation will make the America of the past. This is a challenge for the sociologist and intimations of recent years that he may be equal to it are not without ground. An an example, the question of the Third Article in the Northwest Ordinance is manifestly a the sort of a question to the legal scientist would tackle in the technique of “re-statement” and “reformulation” what would be the effect a repealing amending or omitting this Article what were the territorial limits of Virginia. The student of American constitutional law has seen valiant attempts to get various declarations and resolves of the revolutionary and Articles of Confederation period into some sort of order of precedence and compare them with the Constitution. And even the revered Dred Scott decision is worth study if it be regarded as social psychological treatment of a repetitive judicial problem during the century from Somerset’s Case through the American Civil War. But the relative paucity of historical records on slavery and the era of Constitutional Convention may make the task more difficult for the Civil War historian. Note “history” as an academic pursuit was not common in the period. This is an illustration: Would a history or English teacher of today be aggrieved if he learned that his best student had disappeared law school.

The scholars represented in this issue are not unanimous on the interpretation of various clauses in the Constitution that are relevant to slavery. There are those who would claim today, as Calhoun did, that the Constitution is a neutral document, that it recognized the existence of slavery, conceding no more, and that it was designed to allow the Congress a free hand on the question. The prohibition of amendment to Article V seems to be conclusive evidence that the framers conceived the national government as a protector of the states’ rights, institution of slavery. This interpretation is one of the steps in the attempt one time honored, another among modern historians to persuade the Supreme Court to reverse its “political questions” doctrine and issue opinions on distinction between bond and free person. Here again the Constitution is argued to have denied to Congress the power to restrict the importation of slaves from abroad prior to 1808; either ban is taken chastise South for its persistence in the traffic an afterthought in the Colonization of North America, or it is omitted through the Article I Section 9 clause forbidding the imposition of a capitation or duty on that importation of it’s the duty overstates the political realities in the two-thirds majority. And finally the Dred Scott decision discovered the status Negro in a definition of persons were incorporate V section 2 and Article IV section 2 clauses pertaining to fugitive slave. On the other hand, is Thaddeus Stevens some has the opinion that the Constitution contained in a contract of ambiguity which the antislavery forces showed have been in their favor but enough evidence still exists a thy slave power its friends were persistent violators this compromise but.

The Constitution’s Position on Slavery

4. Impact of the Constitution on Slavery

The political institution of slavery had always contained a strong element of class conflict, the slaveholders knowing well that every hint of equality between the black and white races could serve as a dangerous threat against the stability of the master-slave relationship. It was this class conflict inherent in the institution of slavery which was to force its opponents in the South to take radical action against slavery on the eve of the Civil War. Prior to this time, however, there had been a small biracial class of people living in the South who enjoyed a status that, if not equal to that of whites, was substantially higher than that of any class of black people in the United States posterior to that time. This was the class of blacks and their descendants, who had achieved freedom or were born of free parents. This class of people had been able to make some civil and economic advances, and were often considered a significant economic and political threat to the white working class. When the proslavery elements in the South began to perceive a sectional threat to slavery arising from federal interference and saw their own political-economic power within the South as threatened, they moved to quash the threat of the class of free blacks and drive black and white laboring people apart.

While some historians have suggested that the United States Constitution was a totally proslavery document, others have described it as a relatively antislavery document. In fact, the Constitution contained a number of provisions which appeared to be antithetical to slavery, and it was these provisions which would be the focus of the debate over the impact of the Constitution on slavery.

5. Conclusion

This leads, finally, to the conclusion of the entire argument. America functioned as a successful society, indeed an impressively visionary one, to the extent that the document under consideration was demanded by important elements in that society to ensure the continued success of an obviously new and experimental form of federal government. That society had proved a significant social order in the history of mankind. It had produced a thriving economy, unequalled at that point by so relatively few individuals, for yet no society had ever succeeded in putting so few individuals upon the totality of the earth’s surface and merely stating the ingenuity of a new social structure which could yet sustain and possibly surpass the previous one. That society had already dealt with marauding neighbors with some success. But there was still no historical precedent for the functioning of a ‘federal’ government. Within that society, with the curiosity of good experimental scientists, a number of political theorists upon witnessing the 13 different contracts of alliance had desired to try an entirely new mode of government. The successful ratification of the Constitution suggests that they had convinced, or at least intrigued, a sufficient number of their fellow citizens into permitting them to chance the insurance of a more efficient security for its preservation. It was this element which forced the great compromises.