[226] Two grave objections were made to this settlement respecting the importation of slaves. Mr. Madison records himself as saying, in answer to the motion of General Pinckney to adopt the year 1808, that twenty years would produce all the mischief that could be apprehended from the slave-trade, and that so long a term would be more dishonorable to the American character, than to say nothing about it in the Constitution. But the real question was, whether the power to prohibit the importation at any time could be acquired for the Constitution; and the facts show that it could have been obtained only by the arrangement proposed and carried. The votes of seven States against four, given for General Pinckney's motion, show the convictions then entertained. The other objection (urged by Roger Sherman and Mr. Madison) was, that to lay a tax upon imported slaves implied an acknowledgment that men could be articles of property. But it appears from the statements of other members, also recorded by Madison, that it was part of the compromise agreed upon in committee, that the slave-trade should be placed under the revenue power, in consideration of its not being placed at once within the commercial power. It also appears that the tax was made to apply to the "importation of such persons as the States might see fit to admit," until the year 1808, in order to include and to discourage the introduction of convicts.
But the principal object was undoubtedly the slave-trade; and this particular phraseology was employed, instead of speaking directly of the importation of slaves into the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, in order, on the one hand, not to give offence to those States, and on the other, to avoid offending those who objected to the use of the word "slaves" in the Constitution. Elliot, V. 477, 478.
[227] That part of the compromise relating to the slave-trade, &c. was adopted in Convention by the votes of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, ay, 7; New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, no, 4. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia voted for a proposition made by C. Pinckney, to postpone the report, in order to take up a clause requiring all commercial regulations to be passed by two thirds of each house. But on the rejection of this motion, the report of the compromise committee, recommending that a two-thirds vote for a navigation act be stricken out, was agreed to, nem. con.; as was also the clause relating to a capitation tax.
[228] See the note on the American abolition of the slave-trade, ante, Vol. I. p. 460.
[229] See the remarks of John Rutledge. Madison, Elliot, V. 491.
[230] General Pinckney. Ibid. 489.
[231] The point respecting the slave-trade was insisted upon by the delegates of those three States, both as a matter of State pride and a matter of practical interest. They regarded the increase of their slave population by new importations as a thing of peculiarly domestic concern, the control of which they were unwilling to transfer to the general government. But they also contended for a political right which their States intended to exercise. The following table, taken from the United States Census, shows that in the twenty years which elapsed from 1790 to 1810 during eighteen of which the importation of slaves could not be prohibited by Congress, the slaves of those three States increased in a ratio so much larger than the rate of increase after the year 1808, as to make it apparent that it was not a mere abstraction on which they insisted. The right to admit the importation of slaves was exercised, and was intended to be exercised;—as some of the delegates of the three States declared in the Convention.
Progress of the Slave Population from 1790 to 1850, showing the Increase per Cent in each Period of Ten Years.
| North Carolina. | South Carolina. | Georgia. | |
| 1790 to 1800 | 32.53 | 36.46 | 102.99 |
| 1800 to 1810[A] | 26.65 | 34.35 | 77.12 |
| 1810 to 1820 | 21.43 | 31.62 | 42.23 |
| 1820 to 1830 | 19.79 | 22.62 | 45.35 |
| 1830 to 1840[B] | 0.08 | 3.68 | 29.15 |
| 1840 to 1850 | 17.38 | 17.71 | 35.85 |
But while the census shows that the power to admit slaves was exercised freely during the twenty years that followed the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it also shows that the States which insisted on retaining it for that period could well afford to surrender it at the stipulated time. In 1810, the proportion of the blacks of North Carolina to the whole population was 32.24 per cent, and in 1850 it was 36.36; in South Carolina the proportion in 1810 was 48.4, and in 1850, 58.93; in Georgia, in 1810 it was 42.4, and in 1850, 42.44. It is not probable, therefore, that the prosperity of those States has been diminished by the discontinuance of the slave-trade; for it is not likely that they could well sustain a much larger ratio of the blacks to the whites than that which now exists, and which will probably continue to be maintained at about the same point for a long period of time.