We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish
this Constitution for the United States of America.
John Harrison: The question of whether the role of slavery in the Constitution undermines
its authority or makes it fundamentally flawed has been around for a long time. Goes back
to the formation of the Constitution. Gordon Wood: Well in 1776 I think everyone,
all the founders certainly, knew that slavery was incompatible with their message that they
were promoting life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. They just knew that there was an
inconsistency between holding people in servitude or in slavery. Lots of people of course were
in bonded servitude as well, and all of that comes under assault as a result of the revolution.
Randy Barnett: Pretty much everyone conceded that it was wrong, and then the only question
is what to do about it. Lucas Morel: They discovered during the revolutionary
war that they needed to stay a union. They needed to be unified in order to be independent
and that independence was the key to securing freedom. Now to stay unified, that meant they
had to get everybody to stay together. Well, what if those states still couldn't get rid
of slavery at the time? That's the situation where you had to have a compromise.
Steve Calabresi: To understand the compromises, to understand the situation of the Constitution
and slavery, it's important to know that in all 13 colonies, including even the New England
colonies, there was slavery. Lynn Uzzell: When talking about the Constitution
and its relationship to slavery, it is the most difficult topic that we can confront.
Because here is this element of evil that is part of our history. And at the same time,
the Constitution clearly acknowledges it. But that doesn't mean that slavery was an
intrinsic part of the Constitution. It was seen for the most part as an institution that
resided within the States. Lucas Morel: The Founders' Constitution made
compromises with slavery, but it wasn't established to preserve slavery. One thing we don't think
about a lot or factor into these current debates about slavery in the founding period is that
slavery was not a national institution per se. It was a state institution. Each state
dealt with it differently. Randy Barnett: The northern states, the free
states, or the states that were on the path to freedom by this point, in no way wanted
to enter into a compact that affirmatively endorsed slavery which is the reason why the
Constitution is very, very carefully worded to avoid, first of all, the use of the word
slave, or slavery at all, which would have had the effect of endorsing slavery, or any
words in the Constitution that recognize the justice of property and man.
Steve Calabresi: The framers of the Constitution all recognized that slavery was wrong. They
also recognized as practical politicians, that there was no way that Virginia, the Carolinas
and Georgia, or even Maryland and Delaware, would ratify the Constitution if it abolished
slavery. Some acknowledgement of slavery therefore had to be made in the Constitution.
John Harrison: The Southern states simply would not have gone along with a stronger
union had they been faced with the choice between a stronger union that was devised
to be anti-slavery and simply continuing under the Articles of Confederation, or continuing
as more or less independent sovereigns. One of the things that's discussed in the early
Federalist papers is the possibility that the then-existing union would simply collapse,
would break up into one, two, or three separate confederacies.
Randy Barnett: What was the compromise? The compromise was to allow slavery local while
preserving freedom national. Slavery local meant it was a local institution. It was not
ratified by the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't say slavery is just, it just says
we are not touching slavery. It's something that's strictly a matter of local law.
Steve Calabresi: The Constitution's compromises with slavery were three: the three-fifths
clause, the fugitive slave clause, and this 1808 clause.
Lynn Uzzell: If the new Constitution was going to represent states proportionally, they had
to decide proportion according to what? And the two main options were population or wealth.
And both of those would have at least implicitly involved slaves in one way or the other. And
in the end, most people thought population was the best way.
Lucas Morel: The abolitionists, if you will, at the Founding at the Constitutional Convention,
you know how much they wanted slaves represented? Zero-fifths. It was the slaveholding constituents.
It was slaveholding states like South Carolina and Georgia and North Carolina that wanted
slaves counted as five-fifths, if you will, whole human beings because they wanted of
course to magnify their power, their authority at the national level. It was actually the
people who were most emphatically against the institution of slavery that said slaves
shouldn't be counted at all. Gordon Wood: The North wants, some want no
representation for slaves and so the compromise is three-fifths which becomes a major issue
in the early 19th century. Steve Calabresi: But the South basically said,
"Either we get this clause or there'll be no Constitution." What Gouverneur Morris finally
said was, "The only hope of abolishing slavery in the South is to first create a powerful
federal government, and then hope that that federal government over time will abolish
slavery in the South." Of course that's what in fact happened. That's how the three-fifths
clause got into the Constitution over the vehement objections of Northern delegates
to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention. Gordon Wood: In 1808 the Constitution promises
the end of the slave trade, which everyone assumes it will be also help to kill the institution
nationally. Lucas Morel: The original date that would
allow Congress to ban the importation of slaves, the slave trade into the United States was
1800. South Carolina at century says you, "You give us 20 years, you give us till 1808
or we're not going to sign this thing." Lynn Uzzell: Now the third clause relating
to slavery is the worst of all. The fugitive slave clause.
Steve Calabresi: The fugitive slave clause provided that if any slave escaped into a
free state, the free state was under an obligation to return him to his master in a slave state.
Lynn Uzzell: One of the reasons why it is the worst of all is because unlike the other
two, it was not absolutely necessary. The Constitution did not have to say anything
about the fugitive slaves, but certain members in the Southern States again insisted that
that clause be inserted. Lucas Morel: In Madison's notes, as he carefully
describes the debates over the votes on the Three-Fifths Compromise, on the Fugitive Slave
Clause, on the Non-importation Clause, he is actually recording, delegate after delegate
after delegate. State delegates both North and South of the Mason-Dixon line, if you
will, are arguing that we can't shore up slavery. This is a toxic, this is poison to our republic.
We have got to find a way to get rid of it, but we've got this minority that we've got
to deal with and so they make compromises. Gordon Wood: The feeling is I think that the
slavery will eventually die. That's why it's not going to be mentioned in the Constitution
directly but, there is also the provision for fugitive slaves, servants, bonded people.
Again, the term slave is not used. Randy Barnett: Since they anticipated that
slavery would eventually go away, they wanted a Constitution that wasn't marred by the reference
to slavery in the future. The absence of any reference to slavery was deliberate. During
the Constitutional Convention, when proposals were made that would seemingly have endorsed
slavery, and then it was pointed out that wait a second, by saying this, it looks like
that could be construed as an endorsement, they immediately voted that out. None of that
language made it into the Constitution. Lynn Uzzell: The Constitution really just
set up a framework within which political debates were meant to happen. Which is to
say the Constitution did not really have a stance about slavery. It had made compromises
with slavery. It had made some concessions, in at least one important respect, it had
made an improvement on the condition of slaves in that it allowed for the prohibition of
the slave trade after 20 years. John Harrison: So it is certainly easy to
see a scenario in which the Constitution was not created at all, and in which Southern
slavery lasted longer, or in which the process of destroying Southern slavery was even more
traumatic than it turned out to be, and it was pretty traumatic in the 1860s. Whereas
we know what happened under the actual Constitution. We know that ultimately the geographical spread
of slavery was limited, that that in turn brought about the Civil War, which brought
about abolition and the slow process of the fuller integration into American economic
and political and social life.