[Footnote 22: A.C. McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution (New York [1905]), chap. 7; B.A. Hinsdale, The Old Northwest (New York, 1888), chap. 15.]
By this time radicalism in general had spent much of its force. The excessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty of individuals had threatened for a time to break the community's grasp upon the essentials of order and self-restraint. Social conventions of many sorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against their opponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalist property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class interests, and the central government, made pitiably weak by the prevailing jealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirking of burdens by states pledged to its financial support. But populism and particularism brought their own cure. The paralysis of government now enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and get a hearing in their advocacy of sound system. Exalted theorising on the principles of liberty had merely destroyed the old régime: matter-of-fact reckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new. The plan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with the popular will to procure a general ratification.
Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent but under local control. At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen, its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over it continued to lie in the several state governments. The great convention at Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer of authority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the one hand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicate one, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside all problems not regarded as essential in their main task. Conscious ignorance by even the best informed delegates from one section as to affairs in another was a dissuasion from the centralizing of doubtful issues; and the secrecy of the convention's proceedings exempted it from any pressure of anti-slavery sentiment from outside.
On the whole the permanence of any critical problem in the premises was discredited. Roger Sherman of Connecticut "observed that the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense of the people of the several states would by degrees compleat it." His colleague Oliver Ellsworth said, "The morality or wisdom of slavery are considerations belonging to the states themselves"; and again, "Let us not intermeddle. As population increases poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our country." And Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts "thought we had nothing to do with the conduct of states as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any sanction to it." The agreement was general that the convention keep its hands off so far as might be; but positive action was required upon incidental phases which involved some degree of sanction for the institution itself. These issues concerned the apportionment of representation, the regulation of the African trade, and the rendition of fugitives. This last was readily adjusted by the unanimous adoption of a clause introduced by Pierce Butler of South Carolina and afterward changed in its phrasing to read: "No person held to service or labour in one state under the laws thereof escaping into another shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due." After some jockeying, the other two questions were settled by compromise. Representation in the lower house of Congress was apportioned among the states "according to their several members, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons … three fifths of all other persons." As to the foreign slave trade, Congress was forbidden to prohibit it prior to the year 1808, and was merely permitted meanwhile to levy an import duty upon slaves at a rate of not more than ten dollars each. [23]
[Footnote 23: Max Farrand ed., The Records of the Federal Convention (New
Haven, 1911), passim]
In the state conventions to which the Constitution was referred for ratification the debates bore out a remark of Madison's at Philadelphia that the real difference of interests lay not between the large and small states but between those within and without the slaveholding influence. The opponents of the Constitution at the North censured it as a pro-slavery instrument, while its advocates apologized for its pertinent clauses on the ground that nothing more hostile to the institution could have been carried and that if the Constitution were rejected there would be no prospect of a federal stoppage of importations at any time. But at the South the opposition, except in Maryland and Virginia where the continuance of the African trade was deprecated, declared the slavery concessions inadequate, while the champions of the Constitution maintained that the utmost practicable advantages for their sectional interest had been achieved. Among the many amendments to the Constitution proposed by the ratifying conventions the only one dealing with any phase of slavery was offered, strange to say, by Rhode Island, whose inhabitants had been and still were so active in the African trade. It reads: "As a traffic tending to establish and continue the slavery of the human species is disgraceful to the cause of liberty and humanity, Congress shall as soon as may be promote and establish such laws as may effectually prevent the importation of slaves of every description."[24] The proposal seems to have received no further attention at the time.
[Footnote 24: This was dated May 29, 1790. H.V. Ames, "Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," in the American Historical Association Report for 1896, p. 208]
In the early sessions of Congress under the new Constitution most of the few debates on slavery topics arose incidentally and ended without positive action. The taxation of slave imports was proposed in 1789, but was never enacted: sundry petitions of anti-slavery tenor, presented mostly by Quakers, were given brief consideration in 1790 and again at the close of the century but with no favorable results; and when, in 1797, a more concrete issue was raised by memorials asking intervention on behalf of some negroes whom Quakers had manumitted in North Carolina in disregard of legal restraints and who had again been reduced to slavery, a committee reported that the matter fell within the scope of judicial cognizance alone, and the House dismissed the subject. For more than a decade, indeed, the only legislation enacted by Congress concerned at all with slavery was the act of 1793 empowering the master of an interstate fugitive to seize him wherever found, carry him before any federal or state magistrate in the vicinage, and procure a certificate warranting his removal to the state from which he had fled. Proposals to supplement this rendition act on the one hand by safeguarding free negroes from being kidnapped under fraudulent claims and on the other hand by requiring employers of strange negroes to publish descriptions of them and thus facilitate the recovery of runaways, were each defeated in the House.
On the whole the glamor of revolutionary doctrines was passing, and self interest was regaining its wonted supremacy. While the rising cotton industry was giving the blacks in the South new value as slaves, Northern spokesmen were frankly stating an antipathy of their people toward negroes in any capacity whatever.[25] The succession of disasters in San Domingo, meanwhile, gave warning against the upsetting of racial adjustments in the black belts, and the Gabriel revolt of 1800 in Virginia drove the lesson home. On slavery questions for a period of several decades the policy of each of the two sections was merely to prevent itself from being overreached. The conservative trend, however, could not wholly remove the Revolution's impress of philosophical liberalism from the minds of men. Slavery was always a thing of appreciable disrelish in many quarters; and the slave trade especially, whether foreign or domestic, bore a permanent stigma.
[Footnote 25: E. g., Annals of Congress, 1799-1801, pp. 230-246.]