NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!
A PRO-SLAVERY COMPACT.
Extracts from Debates in the Congress of Confederation, preserved by Thomas Jefferson, 1776.
Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declaration of Independence, * * *
The clause too reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa was struck out, in compliance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of Slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.—p. 18.
On Friday, the twelfth of July, 1776, the committee appointed to draw the articles of Confederation reported them, and on the twenty-second, the House resolved themselves into a committee to take them into consideration. On the thirtieth and thirty-first of that month, and the first of the ensuing, those articles were debated which determined the proportion or quota of money which each State should furnish to the common treasury, and the manner of voting in Congress. The first of these articles was expressed in the original draught in these words:—
"Article 11. All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence, or general welfare, and allowed by the United States assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several Colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, sex and duality, except Indians not paying taxes, in each Colony, a true account of which, distinguishing the white inhabitants, shall be triennially taken and transmitted to the Assembly of the United States."
Mr. CHASE (of Maryland) moved, that the quotas should be paid, not by the number of inhabitants of every condition but by that of the "white inhabitants." He admitted that taxation should be always in proportion to property; that this was in theory the true rule, but that from a variety of difficulties it was a rule which could never be adopted in practice. The value of the property in every State could never be estimated justly and equally. Some other measure for the wealth of the State must therefore be devised, some standard referred to which would be more simple. He considered the number of inhabitants as a tolerably good criterion of property, and that this might always be obtained. He therefore thought it the best mode we could adopt, with one exception only. He observed that negroes are property, and as such cannot be distinguished from the lands or personalities held in those States where there are few slaves. That the surplus of profit which a Northern farmer is able to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c.; whereas, a Southern farmer lays out that same surplus in slaves. There is no more reason therefore for taxing the Southern States on the farmer's head and on his slave's head, than the Northern ones on their farmers' heads and the heads of their cattle. That the method proposed would therefore tax the Southern States according to their numbers and their wealth conjunctly, while the Northern would be taxed on numbers only: that negroes in fact should not be considered as members of the State, more than cattle, and that they have no more interest in it.