When the Constitution was developed at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the founders refused to address the slavery laws in order to reach a compromise between the North and the South. Slavery was a divisive issue at the Convention, and the northern delegates felt better to ratify the Constitution than to dissolve the Union over it. This need for unanimity and the fear of economic repercussions from ending slavery caused the writers of the Constitution to write in three compromises about the practice of slavery, but not to address the whole issue.
The first or “Great” compromise occurs in Art. I. Section II of the Constitution. The number of representatives in the House of Representatives was determined by population, with one member elected to represent no more than 30,000 people in each state (Constitution, 1787). The South wanted to count a large slave population for its representation. Dissidents in the North, contending that slaves should not be allowed to vote, things were considered by the masters. They wanted the South to be over-represented in the House, and to increase their representation in the Electoral College. Realizing that the South was unlikely to have a constitution without enumeration of slaves, James Wilson of Pennsylvania proposed the 3/5 Compromise (Hickey, 1998). This allowed each servant to be counted as 3/5 of one person for the purposes of taxation and congressional representation.
The slave trade was another source of contention for the authors. Many of them did not approve of the slave trade, but they also understood that the southern states would never ratify the Constitution if the slave trade ended immediately (Monte, 2007). The compromise in Article I, Section IX of the Constitution was written so that Congress could not stop the slave trade immediately, but had the right to do so twenty years later.
The third compromise in the Constitution made in Art. IV Art. 2. He asserts that one condition laws cannot excuse a person from forced labor. in another state and must be restored to its original state (1787). The authors did not use the word “slaves” in writing, but this chapter is understood to be about slaves. He satisfied the concerns of the South that the North would be a safe haven for fugitive slaves.
There were also economic reasons why the founders avoided slavery in the Constitution. Southern owners chose plantation slavery for their labor, as it seemed to them the cheapest solution to meet their plantation needs. While the south thrived on slaves for labor, the north saw its benefits from slavery. Although the northern republics avoided the onslaught of the Industrial-revolution by practicing slavery, much of their economy depended on it. marketing, manufacturing, and shipping many goods that grew from slaves to the south (I was a slave machine, 2009). The North was also heavily involved in the slave trade until the Civil War (Harper, 2003). In this way both the North and the South were able to build themselves up economically by the institution of slavery. The emerging nation relied on the slave economy as a tool for rapid growth.
The failure to enshrine slavery in the Constitution, while offering meager compromises, did little to quell the growing rift between abolitionists and deep southern plantation owners; he alone put off the fight. The need for unanimous ratification of the Constitution and the fear of economic repercussions from ending slavery ignored the larger problems – a problem that could easily be solved. Disagreements over slavery eventually led to the Civil War of the United States of America.
References
Constitution of the United States of America. (1787). Retrieved March 26, 2009, from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitutions_of_the_United_States_of_North_America
Harper, D. (2003). Servant in the North Retrieved March 11, 2009, from http://www.slavenorth.com/profits.htm
Hickey, S. (1998). The 3/5 Compromise. Retrieved March 26, 2009, from http://www.teachingcompany.com/cp4/MDHickey.html.
Mountain, S. (2007). Constitutional Topic: Slavery. Retrieved March 11, 2009, from http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_slav.html
Was slavery the engine of economic growth? (2009). Retrieved March 11, 2009, from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/con_oeconomic.cfm
