A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention / For Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861

by L. E. Chittenden

Yeas.—Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina—3.

Nays.—New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania—6.

This was under the Confederation articles, which provided that the vote on all questions should be taken by States, each State casting one vote; that no proposition could be adopted without the vote of seven States in favor of it, and that the vote of no State could be counted unless two members, at least, were present. As there were but six States in favor of the proposition to prohibit slavery after 1800, it was stricken out.

There was but one member present from New Jersey, and the vote of that State was not counted. The member present voted for Mr. Jefferson's proposition. Another vote from that State would have made the required number, and carried the measure.

In North Carolina, Williamson voted for prohibition, and Speight against it. One more vote from that State would have made seven States for the proposition, and it would have been carried.

Jefferson voted for his own proposition to prohibit; and if one of the other two members present from Virginia had voted with him, that, too, would have made the required number of seven States.

The vote North and South, by members, was in favor of prohibition: North, 14; South, 2—total, 16. Against prohibition, South, 7.

The majority was more than two-thirds; enough to carry it over an executive veto under the present Constitution, and yet it was defeated. And this vote was given in favor of absolute and unconditional prohibition, and that alone, without the right of reclaiming fugitive slaves, or any proposition, or any expectation to confer it. Under the Confederation, no such right existed, nor was it agreed to till more than three years afterwards, and then with the greatest reluctance, and as a matter of compromise, as I will presently show.

Such was the action of the American Congress in 1784—a unanimous vote from the North, and two in nine from the South—in favor of excluding slavery forever after 1800, in all new States to be formed, in territory ceded or to be ceded, embracing Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, in the extreme South. Nothing can be clearer than that the interdiction was to apply to all such States, and to constitute a fundamental Constitution between them and the original States, unalterable without the consent of Congress. The new State was to be deprived of all power to admit slavery. This proposition was made and voted for by Jefferson. But how many votes would such a proposition receive in this Convention? Not many, I fear, even from the free States. My friend and colleague, though strongly anti-slavery, and earnestly devoted to freedom in the Territories, is afraid I shall commit Massachusetts to this old Jeffersonian doctrine of no slavery, and no right to establish it in the new States.

From this time till July, 1787, the question of slavery in the Territories and new States remained open and unsettled. In 1785, Rufus King renewed Mr. Jefferson's proposition to prohibit, and it was referred to a committee by the vote of eight States; but it never became a law, a few from the South always preventing it.