American Revolutions by Alan Taylor

Author:Alan Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Slaves

The heated debates over representation exposed a second, even more dangerous fault line between northern and southern states. Slaves comprised less than 4 percent of the northern population compared to 40 percent in the South. Determined to protect their property rights in humans, southern delegates worried about entering a more powerful union that northerners might control. Pierce Butler explained, “The security the South[er]n States want is that their negroes, may not be taken from them.” Southerners wanted a union strong enough to defend their states against slave rebellion and foreign invasion but without the authority to tax or emancipate slaves.79

Some northern delegates argued that only free citizens should count in allocating seats in the House of Representatives. Gouverneur Morris denounced the inequity that

the inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina 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 connections 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 Pennsylvania or New Jersey who views with a laudable horror so nefarious a practice.

A Massachusetts delegate satirically reasoned that northern oxen should count on a par with southern slaves in representation. Southerners countered that they needed the political clout of slave numbers to protect their property from federal interference.80

Rival regional interests, rather than moral qualms, drove the debate, for the delegates regarded blacks as inferior to whites. Every delegate primarily sought a formula for representation meant to protect his state. The convention compromised by adopting the notorious “three-fifths clause,” which stipulated that three-fifths of the enslaved population would count in allocating congressional seats and presidential electors to the states.81

In August, another heated debate erupted over continuing the import slave trade. On this issue, southern delegates divided. Seeking to expand their operations, planters in the Lower South demanded continued imports from Africa. The Upper South’s leaders, however, believed that they had a surplus and could profit by sales to the Lower South. Banning import competition would enhance those profits, but principle also played a role with some delegates, particularly Madison, who insisted that importing more slaves would “dishonor” the nation.82

Although outnumbered, the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina had a trump card to play: they cared less about the union than about protecting the import slave trade, while the other delegations reversed that priority. By threatening to bolt from the convention and forsake the union, Lower South delegates called the bluff of their critics. Georgians and Carolinians also discovered that northern men had a price for their scruples. Reliant on shipping and shipbuilding, New Englanders wanted the Constitution to empower Congress to pass “navigation acts” by a mere majority rather than the two-thirds vote previously insisted upon by southern delegates. Favoring northern vessels, such navigation acts would restrict foreign competition and thereby increase mercantile profits and southern shipping costs.83

In return for that lower threshold for trade regulation, northeastern delegates agreed that Congress could place no limit on slave imports for twenty years.

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