The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery. Edgerton Joseph Ketchum
in speaking of this period of our history – "That the confederation had at least totally failed as an effectual instrument of government. It stood the shadow of a mighty name."
Judge Marshall on the same subject says – "The confederation was apparently expiring from mere debility."
Judge Story further says – "It is, indeed, difficult to over-charge any picture of the gloom end apprehension which pervaded the public councils, as well as the private meditations of the ablest men of the country."
It was under such circumstances that the convention for forming the present Constitution of the Union was called.
Into this convention were brought by the delegates of the States, the same unceasing jealousy and watchfulness, which had marked the formation of the confederation, in respect to the powers to be confided to the general government.
In the Articles of Confederation it had been declared "that each State retained its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right not expressly delegated to the United States."
The States were generally unwilling to surrender anything of their internal sovereignty. They claimed then as they claim now, full right and power to regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way, and were willing to surrender to the general government only such powers as were necessary to the complete efficiency of a Federal government in attaining the purposes of the Union. These were in the language of Alexander Hamilton:
"The common defence of the members; the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries."
The difficulty of obtaining a ratification of the Constitution by the people of the States, was not less than the difficulty of framing it in convention. Georgia, New Jersey and Delaware unanimously approved the Constitution. It was supported by large majorities in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland and South Carolina. It was carried in Massachusetts, New York and Virginia only by a small majority. North Carolina and Rhode Island were the last to adopt it, and the former at first rejected it.
In the address of the convention to Congress on presenting the Constitution with the recommendation for its submission to and approval by the States, the convention say: "The Constitution which we now present, is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable." In these few words of the framers of the Constitution, expressing its reason or spirit, we find the true guide to its interpretation and administration. The spirit of compromise, so far as relates to the clashing views or conflicting interests of different States or sections of the Union, pervades the Constitution in every part, and especially is this the case in reference to the now all-absorbing question of negro slavery.
What was the state of this institution at the adoption of the Constitution, and how did the Constitution deal with it?
The first introduction of African slaves into the American colonies was in 1620. The total number imported by means of the African slave trade between 1715 and 1790, was about 300,000. When the Constitution was ratified in 1790, the total number of slaves in all the States and territories was near 700,000. All the States ratifying the Constitution, except Massachusetts, held slaves; Virginia the largest number – over 293,000; New Hampshire the smallest number – 158. Even the granite hills of New Hampshire were not then free from the feet of bondmen.
Our fathers were not responsible for the existence of slavery in their midst. As already stated, the introduction of slaves had commenced in 1620, 156 years before the declaration of independence, and the institution had under the patronage of the British government, insidiously grown up and strengthened itself, especially in the Southern States, which were adapted to negro labor. There it had interwoven itself with the entire fabric of the social and domestic relations, and could not be suddenly or rashly severed without involving greater evils than its own existence.
It is undoubtedly true that a large number of the framers of the Constitution were themselves slaveholders, among them George Washington himself. With these men domestic slavery, though it might have been regarded as an evil, was certainly not looked upon as a mortal sin, nor were they, whatever might have been their theoretical opinions, practical believers in the doctrine of universal equality of rights or universal suffrage.
Here then, coeval with the organization of the Federal government, was the domestic institution of slavery, existing in all the States but one, and embracing over one sixth of their entire population. There were two very plain methods by which it might have been dealt with. One was by an express declaration of the Constitution, affirming as the Republican sectional party affirm, that slavery is a relic of barbarism, and therefore slavery shall be abolished in all the States and territories of the American Union. Another method was to have declared in the Constitution, as ultra men of the South now declare, that slavery is a benign institution, deserving of protection, encouragement and extension by the Federal government, and therefore slavery shall be protected and extended in all the States and territories of the American Union. Had the constitutional convention been a sectional and not a national organization; had its members been governed by a sectional and not a national spirit, they would doubtless have taken one or the other of the horns of this dilemma, but in that "spirit of amity, mutual deference and concession," which governed their lofty patriotism, they took neither of the extremes. They took the position that the institution of domestic slavery was of local origin and of local concern – a matter directly pertaining to the internal sovereignty of each State; that it was not a legitimate subject for national or Federal legislation, and so far as related to its extension or its abolition within the States, they left it where they found it, with the people of the States whom it most concerned, the Congress assuming only the right, after the period of twenty years, to prohibit the importations of slaves from beyond the limits of the United States. The political reason of this prohibition is apparent. Without it the principle of non-intervention with slavery by the Federal government which pervades the Constitution, could not have been carried out. So long as the foreign traffic in slaves was made lawful to any of the States, slavery was nationalized. American slave ships, engaged in a lawful commerce, and bearing the national flag, would be as much entitled to national protection as any other of the American mercantile marine. Permission of the African slave trade was essentially intervention in favor of slavery, and the right to prohibit it, and the exercise of that right, in no wise conflict with the principle of non-interference with it within the States.
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