The Constitution begins with the apparently all-inclusive phrase “We the people.” At that time, enslaved Africans comprised approximately 20 percent of the people living in the United States. Despite their numerical presence, the Framers excluded enslaved Africans from becoming a part of America’s new government.
The words “slave” and “slavery” cannot be found in the original 1787 Constitution. This omission does not mean the Framers were unaware of the problems posed by slavery. James Madison explicitly identified slavery as the primary source of contention dividing delegates. In his personal Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention, Madison observed that the most profound political fractures did not emerge from differences in state size. Instead, he noted that “the states were divided into different interests…from their having or not having slaves.”
The divisions between slave and free states manifested themselves in polarizing debates over two issues. First, the delegates had to determine how slaves would be counted for purposes of taxation and for determining representation in Congress. And second, the delegates had to decide if America would continue to participate in the Atlantic slave trade.
The Three-Fifths Compromise
The Great Compromise established that Congress would include a popularly elected House of Representatives. A state’s total population would determine how many representatives it would receive. Southern states wanted to count their entire enslaved population to increase their political power in the House of Representatives. Northern delegates countered by arguing that people held as property should be fully taxes and not be counted toward political representation.
The delegates settled the dispute by agreeing to the Three-Fifths Compromise. Under this agreement slaves (euphemistically called “other people”) were treated as three-fifths of a person for purposes of both taxation and representation. This gave the South an enlarged influence in the House of Representations and a larger voice in the Electoral College.
The Slave Trade Debate
The Three-Fifths Compromise did not end the problems created by slavery. During the convention’s final month, delegates repeatedly clashed over whether the federal government could ban the transatlantic slave trade. Gouvernor Morris of Pennsylvania passionately rejected the idea that a slaveholder who goes to Africa and “in the 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” should be rewarded with increased political power in a government established to protect liberty.
Morris’s moral plea failed to persuade delegates from South Carolina and Georgia. They pointed out that their states needed to continue the slave trade in order to replace the slaves evacuated by the British during the Revolutionary War. John Rutledge of South Carolina underscored the callous pragmatism of Southern planters when he dispassionately noted, “Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this [slavery] question. Interest alone is the governing principle of nations.”
Led by James Madison, realistic delegates wanted to avoid a dispute with the South that would fracture the convention. Great as the evil is,” Madison wrote, “a dismemberment of the Union would be worse.” Determined to distinguish the possible from the impossible, the convention resolved the issue by agreeing to a compromise in which Congress would not abolish the transatlantic slave trade until 1808.
So why should you study and remember slavery and the Constitution? APUSH test writers expect students to understand that slavery posed a threat to national unity. The compromises reached at the Constitutional Convention began a series of agreements that ultimately failed to resolve the underlying tensions between the North and South. The divisions temporarily resolved in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia laid bare enduring fault lines that led to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.
It is important to keep in mind that the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and effectively made the “three-fifths of all other persons” category obsolete. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly replaced the wording to ensure full representation for newly freed Black Americans.