152

Part Two

Slavery

tory, or found the uniqueness of the American story in the absence of feudalism, while forgetting the presence of slavery. It is past time for American historians to expose themselves to the presence of slavery, to the full force and the pain of it. Only then can they begin to understand the meaning for all American history of the great and terrible reality which the Founding Fathers of this country did not hesitate to call its original sin.

7 The Aholitionist Critique

of the United States

Constitution "The Constitution of the United States.What is it? Who made it? For whom and for what was it made?" So Frederick Douglass wrote in his paper The North Star in 1849.' It was natural for abolitionists to ask these questions. Their efforts to uproot the peculiar institution were continually frustrated by clauses of the United States Constitution: by Article I, Section 2, which gave the South disproportionate strength in the House of Representatives by adding three-fifths of the slaves to the number of white persons in apportioning Congressmen to the several states; by Article I, Section 8, which gave Congress the power to suppress insurrections; by Article I, Section 9, which postponed prohibition "The Constitution and Slavery," The North Star, March r6, 1849, from The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, ed. Philip Toner (New York, 1950), I, 362. Reprinted from The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abo1 litionists, ed. Martin Duberman (Princeton, 9 6 5), 209-239 153
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not paying Taxes." On July 30, 1776, Samuel Chase of Maryland (later a prominent Antifederalist) moved the insertion of the word "white," arguing that "if Negroes are taken into the Computation of Numbers to ascertain Wealth, they ought to be in settling tin Representation"; Gouverneur Morris would use this same forrnnl. i in July 1787 to resolve the deadlock over representation in the House. 31 In the debate which followed, the changes were rung upon several themes of the Constitutional Convention. Wilson of Pennsylvania said that to exempt slaves from taxation would en courage slaveholding; in response to the observation that if slaves were counted, Northern sheep should also be counted, Benjamin Franklin remarked that "sheep will never make any Insurrections"; Rutledge of South Carolina anticipated the August 1787 debate on navigation laws by warning that "the Eastern Colonies will become the Carriers for the Southern. They will obtain Wealth for which they will not be taxed"; and his colleague Lynch again threw down a South Carolina ultimatum: "If it is debated, whether their Slaves are their Property, there is an end of the Confederation."36 The war had scarcely ended when the sectional debate resumed. We tend to think of Thomas Jefferson as a national statesman, and of the controversy over whether new states would be slave or free as something subsequent to 1820. How striking, then, to find Jefferson writing from Congress to Governor Benjamin Harrison of Virginia in November 1783 about the Northwest Territory: "If a state be first laid off on the [Great] lakes it will add a vote to the
Adams, Diary and Autobiography, II, 24 g . Ibid., II, 246. As early as 1776 one South Carolina delegate voiced fear that Congress would become too powerful, as early as 1778 another demanded that important business be approved by eleven states (Edward Rutledge and William Henry Drayton, quoted in John R. Alden, The South in the Revolution, 1763-1789 [Baton Rouge, La.; 1957], pp. z16, z 1 9). We know from Jefferson's notes on the debates of July-August 1776 that Chase's motion, described in the text, was defeated 7-5 on August r, 1776 by a strictly sectional vote ( The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd [Princeton, 1950-1,
36 3;1

Noi tltcrn scale, if on the Ohio it will add one to the SouthThis concern would never be out of the minds of Southern "n ImIlticians until the Civil War. Jefferson did, of course, attempt to x Inde slavery from the Territories. But on the ninth anniversary i ^I Lexington and Concord, Congress, on motion of Spaight of North Carolina, seconded by Read of South Carolina, struck this luovision from Jefferson's draft proposals.3' principal issue between North and South in these first years of tlie Critical Period was financial. Southern resistance to Northern Iii ,i ncial manipulations did not wait until the 179o's: it began, if one must choose a date, when Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and I)uth the Carolinas voted against the devaluation plan of March i 8, 1780, with every Northern state except divided New Hampshire voting Aye. 39 After the war the issue became still more intense. The Revolutionary campaigns in the South took place largely in the last II i rcc years of the war "when neither Congress nor the states," in Ilse words of E. James Ferguson, "had effective money and the troops were supported by impressments." The result was that of the Il i rce major categories of public debtQuartermaster and Comiuissary certificates issued to civilians; loan certificates; and final settlement certificates issued to the Continental armythe South (held only r6 per cent. 40 The public debt of the South was a state
: Thomas Jefferson to the Governor of Virginia (Benjamin Harrison), November 11, 1783, Letters of the Members of the Continental Congress, ed. 1 dnrund C. Burnett (Washington, D. C.; 1921-1936), VII, 374. Nearly a century ago Hermann von Hoist remarked on "the erroneous view ... that the mischievous political division of the countr y by a geographical line dates back onl y to the Missouri compromise" (The Constitutional and Political History of the United States [Chicago, 1876], I, 86-87), but that view still prevails
today.
38 Bancroft makes the point about the date in his Formation of the Constitution, I, 157. :sa Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, ed. Gaillard Hunt et al. ( Washington, D.C.; 1904-1937), XVI, 267. a0 E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776-1790 (Chapel Hill, 1961), pp. 181-183.

IN^

1,

3z3)-

1^

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debt, while the various kinds of Federal debt were held by Northerners: as Spaight of North Carolina put it, "the Eastern [i.e., Northern] States ... have got Continental Securities for all monies loaned, services done or articles impressed, while to the southward, it has been made a State debt." 41 Hence when Congress sought to tax all the states to repay the Federal debt, the South protested; and when Congress further provided that Northern states could meet their Congressional requisitions with securities, so that only the South need pay coin, the South was furious. Madison told Edmund Randolph in 1783 that unless the public accounts were speedily adjusted and discharged "a dissolution of the Union will be inevitable." "The pious New-Englanders," Read of South Carolina wrote in April 1785, "think tis time to carry their long projected Scheme into Execution and make the southern states bear "42 the burthen of furnishing all the actual money. Sectional considerations underlay many an action of the early 1780's where they might not, at first glance, seem evident. Jefferson's appointment as United States representative in France is an example. Jefferson had been appointed to the commission to negotiate a peace, as had Laurens of South Carolina; but Jefferson did not go and Laurens was captured by the British en route to Europe, so that three NorthernersJohn Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklincarried the burden of the peace talks. The treaty completed, the same three men stayed on in Europe to represent AmerRichard Dobbs Spaight to the Governor of North Carolina (Alexander Martin), April 3o, 1784, Letters of Continental Congress, VII, 509. 42 James Madison to Edmund Randolph, February 25, 1783, The Papers of James Madison, ed. Henry D. Gilpin (Washington, D.C.; 184o),I, 512; Jacob Read to Charles Thomson, April 26, 1785, Letters of Continental Congress, VIII, 1o5. See also: Ephraim Paine to Robert R. Livingston, May 24, 1784, ibid., VII, 534-535; John Francis Mercer to the Executive Council of Virginia, April 10, 1 7 8 4 , ibid., VII, 491; William Grayson to James Madison, September 16, 1785, ibid., VIII, 217; James McHenry to John Hall [September :8? 1785], ibid., VIII, 223; Richard Henry Lee to James Monroe, October /7, 1785, ibid., VIII, 238-239; Nathan Dane to Jacob Wales, January 31, 1786, ibid., VIII,
296-297.
41

1, ,i n interests there, and it was this that aroused Southern concern. runes Monroe expressed it in March 1784, writing to Governor Harrison. Monroe pointed out that Virginia owed British mer, Hilts 2,800,000 in debts, which according to the peace treaty imist now be paid. "It is important to the southern States to whom I He negotiation of these treaties are committed; for except the fishlay and the fur-trade (the latter of w'h Mr. Jeff'n thinks . . . may t urn'd clown the Potow'k). the southern States, are as States, Almost alone interested in it." 13 In May, with Jefferson's appointment achieved, the Virginia delegates in Congress wrote the governor: "It was an object with us, in order to render the Commission is agreable as possible to the Southern States to have Mr. Jefferson placed in the room of Mr. Jay." The previous arrangement, the VirI;inians went on, involved "obvious inequality in the Representaion of these States in Europe"; had it continued, it would have presented "an insurmountable obstacle" to giving the commission all great powers.44 I lere in microcosm was the problem of the South until its victory at the 1787 Convention: recognizing the need for stronger Federal powers, it feared to create them until it was assured that the South could control their use.

III.
Even as early as the 178o's the South felt itself to be a conscious minority. This was evident, for example, in the cornnient of Virginia delegates as to the location of the national capital. "The votes in Congress as they stand at present," wrote the delegates from the Old Dominion, "are unfavorable to a Southern situation and until] the admission of Western States into the Union, we apprehend it will be found impracticable to retain that Body
43 James Monroe to the Governor of Virginia (Benjamin Harrison), March :6, 1784, ibid., VII, 478. 44 The Virginia delegates to the Governor of Virginia (Benjamin Harrik IT 525. son), May 13, 7_4,

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[ Congress], any length of time, Southward of the middle States."45 In the fall of 1786, when the clash over shutting the Mississippi to American commerce was at its height, Timoth y Bloodworth of North Carolina remarked that "it is wel known that the ballance of Power is now in the Eastern States, and they appear determined to keep it in that Direction." 46 This was why such Southerners as Richard.Henry Lee, later the nation's leading Antifedcralist pamph leteer, were already opposing stronger Federal powers in 1785. "It seems to me clear, beyond doubt," Lee wrote to Madison, "that the giving Congress a power to Legislate over the Trade of the Union would be dangerous in the extreme to the Southern or Staple States, whose want of ships and seamen would expose their freightage and their produce to a most pernicious and destructive Monopoly." 47 'This was a strong argument, which would be heard throughout the South till 1861; it was this fear which in all probability caused George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia to refuse to sign the Constitution in 1787. 4 ' Recognizing the force of Lee's argument, Madison wrote to Jefferson in the summer and fall of 1185 that commercial distress was causing a call for stronger powers in Congress throughout the North, but that the South was divided. Lee was "an inflexible adversary, Grayson [William Grayson, another Virginia Antifedcralist in 1788] unfriendly." Animosity against Great Britain would push the South toward commercial regulation, but the high price of tobacco would work against it. "S. Carolina I am told is deliberating on the distresses of her commerce and will probably concur in some general plan; with a pro' The Virginia delegates to the Governor of Virginia (Benjamin Harrison),
May r3, 1 784, ibid., \'II, 524. -' Bloodworth to the Governor of North Carolina (Richard Caswell), September z9, 1786, ibid., VIII,

vino, no doubt against any restraint from importing slaves, of which they have received from Africa since the peace about twelve thou,and." Madison concluded by telling his comrade in France that he Iicinbled to think what would happen should the South not join the other states in strengthening Congress.49 Others beside Madison trembled at this thought: the possibility of disunion was openly and seriously discussed in the 178o's, particularly by those who knew of the fiercely sectional debates in Congress.' And if disunion was only the speculation of a few in 1785, the great controversy over the Mississippi in 1786 shook many more from their complacence. The Mississippi question of the 1780's was a part of the larger question of the destiny of the West which, ultimately, would be Ilse immediate cause of the Civil War. Farrand is less than accurate n i his attempt to disengage the question of the admission of new ~fates at the Constitutional Convention from sectional strife. For if there is a single key to the politics of Congress and the Convention in the Critical Period, it is that the South expected the West to be slave rather than free and to tilt the balance of power southward, while in Bancroft's words "an ineradicable dread of the coming power of the Southwest lurked in New England, especially in Massachusetts." That group in Congress recognized as "the Southern Interest (1786), "the southern party" (1787) or "the
James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, August zo and October 3, 1785, The Writings of James Madison, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York, igoo- 1 9 1 o), 1I, 16o-165, 178-183. The price of tobacco fell precipitously during the following year and Virginia's desire for a stronger federal government correspond. iu gl y grew. 60 See Richard Dobbs Spaight to the Governor of North Carolina (Alexunder Martin), October 16, 1784; Rufus King to John Adams, November z, 1785; Nathan Dane to Edward Pullen, January 8, 1786; Theodore Sedgwick to Caleb Strong, August 6, 1786; Timothy Bloodworth to the Governor of North Carolina (Richard Caswell), September 4, 1786 (Letters of Continental Congress, VII, 6o2-603; VIII, 247, 282, 415-416, 462). See also James Monroe to the Governor of Virginia (Patrick Henry), August 12, 1786 and to James Madison, September 3, 1786 (ibid., VIII, 424-425, 461-462). "Formation of the Constitution, II, 80.
4a

4 7 Richard I lenry Lee to James Madison, August 11, 1785, ibid., VIII, r8r. ^ s See Edmund Randolph to the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, October io, 1787; George Mason's "Account of certain Proceedings in Convention''; and on Mason's motives. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, October 2 4, 1787 and The Landholder [Oliver Ellsworth], VI (Records of the Convention, III, 127, 136, 164-165, 367).

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Southern Delegation" (1788) 52 fought throughout the 178o's to forestall the admission of Vermont until at least one Southern state could be added simultaneously, to hasten the development of the West, and to remove all obstacles to its speedy organization into the largest possible number of new states. 53 It was here that the Mississippi question entered. What was feared if America permitted Spain to close New Orleans to American commerce was not only a separation of the Western states, but a slackening of the southwestward migration which Southerners counted on to assure their long-run predominance in the Union. "The southern states," wrote the French minister to his superio r in Europe, are not in earnest when they assert that without the navigation of the Mississippi the inhabitants of the interior will seek an outlet by way of the lakes, and will throw themselves into the arms of England. . . The true motive of this vigorous opposition is to be found in the great
preponderance of the northern states, eager to incline the balance toward their side; the southern neglect no opportunity of increasing the population and importance of the western territory, and of drawing thither by degrees the inhabitants of New England. . .. These new territories will gradually form themselves into separate governments; James fanning to Nathan N N lay 19, 1786. Letters of Continental Congress, VIII, 364; Otto to Vergennes, February /o, 1787, quoted in Bay croft, Formation of the Constitution, 410; James Madison to Edmund Randolph, August 11, 1788, Letters of Continental Congress, VIII. 7S. 53 As early as Ma y I, 1782, Madison wrote in his "Observations Rclatin to the Influence of Vermont, and the Territorial Claims, on the Politics o Congress, - that the Vermont question excited in the Southern states "al habitual jealousy of a predominance of Eastern interest." (Papers of Madison, 1, 123). On June 8, 1784, I high Williamson of North Carolina wrote Jame s Duane that if Vermont were to be independent he wanted to see " at least two Southern States formed at the same Time" (Letters of Continental Con gress, VII, 347); and at the very moment when the Constitution was being ratified by state conventions, the expiring Congress squabbled bitterly ore pairing the admissions of Vermont and Kentucky (ibid., VIII, 708, 71 4 , 724 733, 7 4 1, 737). See the Virginia delegates to the Governor of Virginia (Edmund Randolph), November 3, 1787, for comment on the South's desir e to admit the Western states rapidly (ibid., VIII, 672-673).
52

will have their representatives in congress, and will augment the mass of the southern statcs.54

to is abundantly confirmed b y the debates of the Virginia ratiIvuig convention, 55 and still more b y Monroe's correspondence t late 1786. On August 1z, 1786, Monroe wrote from Congress to rick Henry:
ii

.111(1

P.S. The object in the occlusion of the Mississippi on the part of hese people so far as it is extended to the interest of their States (for I hose of a private kind gave birth to it) : is to break up so far as this %n III do it, the settlements on the western waters, prevent any in future, thereby keep the States southward as they now arcor if settlements will take place, that they shall be on such principles as to make the interest of the people to separate from the Confederacy, so as ellectually to exclude an y new State from it. To throw the weight of
11

population eastward and keep it there. . . .

,i ke many another Southerner in the next sevent y -five years, Monroe ended by saying that, if it came to separation, it was essential that Pennsylvania join the South. ' 6 So forceful was the effect of his letter on Henry, Madison wrote Washington in December, that I !crry, who had hitherto advocated a stronger Union, began to draw back. By 1788 he, like Lee, Grayson, and Monroe, would be an Antifederalist. The effect of the Mississippi squabble was that the long efforts to vest Congress with power over commerce were threatened with failure at the very brink of success. As delegates made their wa y to the Annapolis Convention in the fall of 1786, Bloodworth of North Carolina wrote that because of debate on the Mississippi "all " Otto to Vergennes, September 10, 1786, quoted in Bancroft, Formati on the Constitution, II, 392. ' Debates in the State Conventions, III, especially the debates of June 13-14, during which, for example, Grayson stated: "This contest of the Mississippi involves this great national contest: That is, whether one part of the continent shall govern the other" (ibid., III, 343). 56 James Monroe to the Governor of Virginia (Patrick Henry), August 12, 1786, Letters of Continental Congress, VIII, 424-425.
of

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other Business seem to be out of View at present." "Should the measure proposed be pursued," Grayson told the Congress, "the S. States would never grant those powers which were acknowledged to he essential to the existence of the Union." 7 When Foreign Secretary Jay had instructions authorizing him to give up American insistence on using the Mississippi river adopted by a simple Congressional majority of seven states it stirred in man y Southern breasts the fear of being outvoted. Even before the Mississippi question came before Congress, Southerners like Monroe had insisted that, if Congress were to regulate commerce, commercial laws should require the assent of nine or even eleven states. 58 Jay's unfairness (as Southerners saw it) in using a simple majority to push through a measure fundamentally injurious to the South greatly intensified this apprehension. When the Constitutional Convention met, the so-called Pinckney Plan would suggest a twothirds Congressional majority for commercial laws, and both the Virginia ratifying convention (which voted to ratify by a small majority) and the North Carolina convention (which rejected ratification) would recommend the same amendment.59 In the midst of the Mississippi controversy, men hopeful for stronger government saw little chance of victory. Madison wrote Jefferson in August 1786 that he almost despaired of strengthening Congress through the Annapolis Convention or any other; 140 in September, Otto wrote to Vergennes: "It is to be feared that this discussion will cause a great coolness between the two parties, and may be the germ of a future separation of the southern states." 6 1 Timothy Bloodworth to the Governor of North Carolina (Richard Caswell), September 4, 1786, ibid., VIII, 462; Charles Thomson, Minutes of Proceedings, August i8, 1786, ibid., VIII, 438. 58 See James Monroe to James Madison, July 26, 1785, ibid., VIII, 172. 59 For the Pinckney Plan, see Records of the Convention, III, 604-6o9; for the amendments proposed in the Virginia and North Carolina ratifying conventions, Debates in the State Conventions, III, 595 and IV, 241. 60 James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, August 12, 1786, Writings of Madison, II, 262. 61 Otto to Vergennes, September io, 1786, quoted in Bancroft, Formation of the Constitution, II, 39 r .
57

Why then did the South consent to the ConstiI^itioual Convention? If the South felt itself on the defensive in 11Ie I78o's, and particularly so in the summer and fall of 1786, why did its delegates agree to strengthen Federal powers in 1787? If a t svu-thirds majority for commercial laws seemed essential to South, ' ti ers in August of one year, why did they surrender it in August cif the next? Were Madison. and Washington, as they steadfastly worked to strengthen the national government, traitors to the inIirests of their section, or was there some view of the future which nationalist Southerners then entertained which enabled them to be t;uod Southerners and good Federalists at the same time? It is Madison, once more, who provides the clue. He saw that if t lie South were to agree in strengthening Congress, the plan which gave each state one vote would have to be changed in favor of the Sunth. And in letters to Jefferson, to Randolph, and to WashingInrn in the spring of 1787 he foretold in a sentence the essential plot OI the Convention drama. The basis of representation would be c hanged to allow representation by numbers as well as by states, because a change was "recommended to the Eastern States by the actual superiority of their populousness, and to the Southern by th eir expected superiori ty ."62 So it fell out. Over and over again members of the Convention stated, as of something on which all agreed, that "as soon as the Southern & Western population should predominate, which must happen in a few years," ha the South would be compensated for any ;a dvantages wrung from it by the North in the meantime. "He must be short sighted indeed," declared King on July 12, who does not foresee that whenever the Southern States shall be more numerous than the Northern, they can & will hold a language that will
James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, March i9[18], 1787, Writings of Madison, II, 327; also same to Edmund Randolph, April 8, 1787 and to
62

George Washington, April r6, 1787 (ibid., pp. 34 0 , 345) ccl These were the words of George Mason on July ii (Records of the Convention, I, 586); see also, e.g.. Madison that same day (ibid., I, 585-586).

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awe them [the Northern States] into justice. If they threaten to separate now in case injury shall be done them, will their threats be less urgent or effectual, when force shall hack their demands." "It has been said," Gouverneur Morris added, "that N.C. [,1 S.C. and Georgia only will in a little time have a majority of the people of America. They must in that case include the great interior Country, and every thing was to be apprehended from their getting the power into their hands."" This false expectation explains why Georgia and the Carolinas who should by present population have been "small" states, considered themselves "large" states at the Convention." This expectation clarifies, it seems to me, why the South gave way in its demand that commercial laws require a two-thirds majority; for would not ti me and the flow of migration soon provide such a majority with out written stipulation? Later, at the Virginia ratifying convention, no one questioned that (as Grayson put it) "God and nature have intended . . . that the weight of population should he on this side of the continent."" 7 Antifederalists reasoned from this assumption that Virginia should wait until a Southern majority in Congress made it safe to transfer power from the states to the national goy ernment. Federalist Wilson Nicholas reasoned from the identical premise to a contrary conclusion. "The influence of New England, and the other northern states is dreaded," Nicholas said, there are apprehensions of their combining against us. Not to advert to the improbability and illiberality of this idea it must be supposed, that our population, will in a short period, exceed theirs, as their country is well settled, and we have very extensive, uncultivated tracts. We shall soon out-number them in as great a degree as they do us at the, ti me: therefore this government, which I trust will last to the remote..i ages, will be very shortly in our favor."
Ibid., 1, 595-596. Ibid., I, 604-605. 66 [See Essay 8, p. 204] 67 Speech of June 14, Debates in the State Conventions, " Speech of June 6, ibid., III, 121-122.
65 64

Nicholas' argument did not convince George Mason. Nicholas ',hawed, stated Mason, 'that though the northern states had a most decided majority against us, yet the increase of population among iv, would in the course of years change it in our favor. A very sound iginnent indeed, that we should cheerfully burn ourselves to death in hopes of a joyful and happy resurrection."" The irony, of course, was that the expectation was completely ! mucous. The expected Southern majority in the House never materialized, and the Senate; not the IIouse, became the bulwark id the South. In 1790, the population of the South had been growing inure rapidly than the North's population for several decades, and was within 200,000 of the population north of the Potomac. I) lie to the general expectation in 1787, the Southwest filled up 1110IC rapidly than the area north of the Ohio River. In 1820, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan contained a population of almost but Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, miisiana, and Arkansas held over 1,3oo,000 persons. Nevertheless, Hie original thirteen states the Northern population pulled so ahead of the Southern that by 1820 the white population of Noilliern states and territories was almost twice that of Southern 1.11es and territories. Thus the South never obtained the Congres%tonal majority which statesmen of both sections had anticipated tlu: ti me of the Constitutional Convention. When the dream of a Southern majority in Congress and the nation collapsed, there fell together with it the vision of a South. III commercial empire, drawing the produce of the West clown the Potomac and the James to "a Philadelphia or a Baltimore" on the Vnginia coast. 7 It was not, as it so often seems, an accident that I he Convention of 1787 grew from the Annapolis Convention, or II wt Virginians were the prime movers in calling both. Throughout the 1780's Madison, Jefferson, Monroe, and to an almost fanatical i m speech of June
"
H

III, 343.

ibid., III, 260-261. James Madison to James Monroe, June 21, /785, Writings of Madison,

1.I8.

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degree, Washington, were intent on strengthening the commercial ties between Virginia and the West. As earl y as 1784, Jefferson sug gested to Madison cooperation with Maryland in opening con, munication to the West, and during that year and the next both Washington and Monroe toured the Western country with their grand plan in nmind. 71 Jefferson and Monroe pushed a Potoni.t, location for the national capital partly with the hope that it would "cement us to our Western friends when they shall be formed iii separate states" and help Virginia to beat out Penns y lvania acid New York in the race for Western trade. 72 Virginia had given ul) its claims to Western land, but its leaders hoped for a commercial dominion just as satisfactory: as Jefferson put it, "almost a monol> oly of the Western and Indian trade."' :; "But smooth the road once," wrote the enraptured Washington, "and make easy the way for them, and then see what an influx of articles will be poured upon us; how amazingly our exports will be encreased by them, and how amply we shall be compensated for any trouble and cx pence we may encounter to effect it." r ' The West, then, would not only give the South political predominance but also, as Macli. son wrote Jefferson, "double the value of half the lands within the Commonwealth, ... extend its commerce, link with its interests those of the Western States, and lessen the emmigration of its Citizens." This was the castle-in-the-air which Virginians pictured
See Bancroft, Formation of the Constitution, I. t yt-r y2, and Book 2, chap. 3. Bancroft seems to have had a better grasp of this phenomenon, as well as of the false Southern expectations about population growth (ibid., II, 87), than any subsequent student. 72 'I`homas Jefferson to George Rogers Clark, December 4, 1783, Letters of Continental Congress, \'II, 378; also James Monroe to the Governor of \'ir ginia (Benjamin Ilarrison), June ii, 1784, ibid., A'II, i5o. 73 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Februar y 2o, 1 784, Papers of Jefferson, VI, 548. r } George Washington to the Governor of Virginia (Benjamin Ilarrison), October ro, 1784, The Writings of George \Washington, ed. John C. Fitr.patrick ( Washington, D. C.; 1938), XXV'II, 476. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, Januar y 9, 1785, \Vritings of Madison, II, 109.
71

fill

worked to bring about the Constitutional Convention, this Ilu' plan for economic development so abruptly and traumati11v shattered by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. n t lie Spring and Summer of i 788, however, as the South with hr North moved to ratify the Constitution, few foresaw the clouds Ilse horizon. The Constitutional Convention, with a Southern 1 iii I i Pity (in Bancroft's words) "from its organization to its dissolu111u i 16 seemed to have wrought well for the South. Madison alone, his vantage-point in Congress, fretted about that body's conIumcd preoccupation with sectional issues. After wrangling all '.piing about the admission of Kentucky, Congress turned to that ,,hl favorite, the location of the capita l. "It is truly mortifying," Madison wrote to Washington, to see such "a display of locality," i-I "local and state considerations," at the very "outset of the new :ovcrnment." The behavior of Congress would give "countenance I, sonic of the most popular arguments which have been inculcated I ' vv Il^c southern antifederalists," and "be regarded as at once a 1 -mof of the preponderancy of the Eastern strength." "I foresee intentions," he wrote the next Spring, "first between federal and mill - federal parties, and then between northern and southern I,, i tics."' 7 Before long he would be leading the opposition.
icy
l i mn

Even this sampling of the printed sources suggests II^at sectional conflict based (to quote Madison once more) on "the institution of slavery and its consequences" was a potent force in th e shaping of the Constitution. The conclusion seems inescapable I hat any interpretation of the Convention which stresses realty and
Bancroft, Formation of the Constitution, II, 75. The South had a majorily in the Convention because Rhode Island did not send a delegation, the New Hampshire delegation came late, and the New York delegation left iii rly. 77 James Madison to George Washington, August 24, 1788 and September ^.t, 1788, Letters of Continental Congress, VIII, 786, 795-796; letter by Madison (otherwise unidentified), March 6, 1789, quoted in Bancroft, Forma( mu of the Constitution, II, 358711

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personalty, large states and small states, or monarchy and dcmoc racy, but leaves slavery out, is an inadequate interpretation. Scholarly effort to bring slavery back into the story of the Rcvo lutionary and Early, National periods might do worse than begin with those much-maligned exponents of the abolitionist critique Horace Greeley and Henry Wilson. They, like Beard, believed that a counterrevolution took place, but they saw as its victim the slay( rather than the white artisan or farmer. Moreover, they viewed the counterrevolution not as a sudden coup d'etat in the years 1787 1788, but as a long-drawn-out process which drew strength from the fatal concessions (as Wilson called them) of the Convention but required such events as the cotton gin and the Louisiana Pm chase for its completion. Crude though they may be, these early abolitionist historians have the power to show us familiar events in a new light. They knew that Adams would have been President in 1800 had the three fifths clause not existed, and they understood why the Hartford Convention made the abrogation of that clause the first plank o platform. They viewed the accession of Jefferson as a triumph for slavery; in their accounts the Louisiana Purchase figures not as a diplomatic triumph or an instance of loose Constitutional con struction, but as an event by which slavery acquired "a vast exten sion of its power and influcnce." 8 They were fully aware of the part which Southern fear of a San Domingo in Cuba played in the genesis of the Monroe Doctrine, and in the American reaction to the Panama Congress. 79 No doubt all these insights are half-truths but they arc half-truths which have been neglected in this century and deserve to be reincorporated into the mainstream of scholarl y interpretation. If it be granted that sectional conflict based on slavery was real and intense long before 1820, our final evaluation of the abolition ist critique of the United States Constitution will still depend on
Greeley, American Conflict, I, 57. See especially Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (Boston, 1872), I, 115-117.
79 78

how we answer the question, Could the Revolution have abolished %lit very? It came very close. During the Revolutionary War the importation of slaves ceased. In 1779 the Continental Congress agreed mialtimously to arm 3,000 slaves in South Carolina and Georgia, with freedom as a reward. In 1784 Congress failed by one vote to s nohibit slavery in the Western territories. " These facts support
i

oil I Iolst in his remark that "but one more impulse was needed."81 Huey Brackett, writing in 1889, 'suggested the sense of lost possililies that was felt when the South Carolina and Georgia legisla1,1 nes refused to adopt the plan to enlist slaves of the Deep South tI Against the British:
that spirit of freedom which had so strongl marked the beginning (of the war, had subsided. It is private not public interest, he added, y which influences the generalit of mankind .82

It was on hearing of the failure of this plan that Washington wrote, y

Many abolitionists, concerned to identify their cause with the charisma of the Founding Fathers, contended that at the time of the Convention all public men expected slavery to die a natural death. This was far from the case. As Hildrcth observed a century ago, the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina did not expect slavery to end: "S. Carolina & Georgia," Madison reported to 83 Jefferson, "were inflexible on the point of slaves." Nor is it safe
8 The 1779 and 1784 episodes arc described by Alden, South in the Revo lution, pp. 225-226, 345-346. Si Constitutional and Political History, I, 31. 92 Jeffrey R. Brackett, "The Status of the Slave, 1775-1789," Essays In The The Formative Period, 1775Constitutional History Of The United States In 1789, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (Boston and New York, 1889), p. 311. The letter paraphrased was written to Lt. Col. John Laurens, July 1o, 1782, and will be found in Washington's Writings, XXIV, 421. 83 Hildreth, Despotism in America, p. 5o4; James Madison to Thomas Jef135. For confirmferson, October 24, 1787, Records of the Convention, III, ing evidence as to the inflexible attitude of South Carolina and Georgia, see, ibid., I, 534, 542, 594, 6o5; II, 95, 364, 371-373; III, 135, 378. The Deep South attitude was one reason a Bill of Rights was omitted from the Constitution (ibid., II, 137 and III, 256).

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to assume that the Upper South looked forward to emancipation. If so, why did every Southern delegation oppose Jefferson's 1784 proposal to prohibit slavery in the West? And if the South was rigid, the North gave way almost without protest. Farrand misses the tragedy of the situation when he says that the majority "regarded slavery as an accepted institution, as a part of the established order." " 4 It would be more accurate to say that almost without exception the Fathers felt that slavery was wrong and almost without exception they failed to act decisively to end it. Among the obvious reasons for the Revolution's failure to cope with slavery were an inability to imagine a genuinely multi-racial society, and an over-scrupulous regard for private property. Even the most liberal of the Founding Fathers were unable to i magine a society in which whites and Negroes would live together as fellow-citizens. Honor and intellectual consistency drove them to favor abolition; personal distaste, to fear it. Jefferson said just this when he wrote: "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. "8' These were also the sentiments of Northerners like Otis, Franklin, and John Quincy Adams. Otis condemned slavery in the abstract, but also prided himself that North America was settled "not as the common people of England foolishly imagine, with a compound mongrel mixture of English, Indian and Negro, but with freeborn British white subjects. " 8 " On the eve of his career as an abolitions4

i.i, J(ilin Quincy Adams praised Andrew Jackson for destroying the motley tribe of black, white, and red combatants," the "parti-colt o it forces" of the "negro-Indian banditti" in Florida.`' As for I'i,iuklin, the future president of the Pennsylvania Abolition SociOv wrote in 1751: the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably y y small. All Africa is black or tawn . Asia chiefl tawny. America y so. And in Europe, the Spani( elusive of the new Comers) wholl y i.' ds, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generall of what we .III a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only y rpted, who with the English, make the principal Bod of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were iny cicascd. And while we arc, as I ma call it, Scouring our Planet, by Icaring America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why y should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? wh increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting then in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, b y excluding all Blacks and Tawncvs, of incrcasing the lovely \Vhitc and Rcd?s' A second reason why the Fathers turned aside from an attack on slavery was their commitment to private property. Gouverneur Morris was the Convention's most outspoken opponent of slavery, the South Carolina delegates were its frankest defenders; but their
iv

The Fathers of the Constitution: A Chronicle of the Establishment of the Union (New Haven, Toronto, London; Igzr), p. 130. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb, I (Washington, 1904), 72-73. se The quoted phrases are from The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved ( Boston, 1764), p. z4; the same pamphlet which also says: "The Colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black.... Does it follow that tis right to enslave a man because he is black? Will short curl'd hair like wool, instead of christian hair, as tis called by those, whose hearts are as hard as the nether millstone, help the argument?" (ibid., p. 29).

' John Quincy Adams to George William Erving, Nov. 28, 1 8i8, AC ritings of John Quincy Adams, ed. \Vorthington Chauncev Ford (New York, 1916), VI, 477, 488. Adams characterized the struggle ofy General Jackson's antagonists as "all in the name of South American libert , of the rights of runaway negroes, and the wrongs of savage murderers" (ibid., p. 496). ss "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind'' (17ir), Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree (New Haven, 1959), IV, 234. Contrast Bolivar: "The blood of our citizens is varied: let it be mixed for the sake of unity" (Selected Writings of Bolivar, ed. Harold A. Bierck, Jr. [New York, 1951], I, 191); and again, to Miranda: "Neither we nor the generation following us will see the glory of the republic which we are founding. There will be a new caste composed of an amalgamation of all races, which will produce a homogeneous people" (Victor Andres Belaunde, Bolivar and the Political Thought of the Spanish American Revolution [Baltimore, 1938], p. 166.

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identical assumptions about the place of property in society drove them to similar conclusions. Thus, in the Convention debates of July 5 and 6, Morris declared that "life and liberty were generally said to be of more value, than property," but that "an accurate view of the matter would nevertheless prove that property was the main object of Society." 89 This was a view which the South Carolinians could only echo. What it came down to was, as Charles Cotesworth Pinckney put it, that "property in slaves should not be exposed to danger under a Govt. instituted for the protection of property."" And so, while Morris stated on July 11 that if compelled to do injustice to human nature or the southern states, he must do it to the latter, that same evening he worked out the formula proportoning representation to direct taxation which proved a "bridge" to the three-fifths compromise; and in August it was he who proposed what he termed a "bargain" between North and South over slave importation.91 As late as 1833, Madison could write that the good faith of the North was "sufficiently guarantied by the interest they have, as merchants, as Ship owners, and as manufacturers, in preserving a Union with the slaveholding states." 92 But apart from interest, the belief that private property was the indispensable foundation for personal freedom made it more difficult for Northerners to confront the fact of slavery squarely. A third, more subtle reason for the failure of nerve of the Founding Fathers when confronting slavery, was precisely that economic realism which Beard so much admired. Harrington's "balance" warred uneasily in their minds with Locke's law "writ in the hearts of mankind." They knew only too well that "power follows prop89 99 91

ty": when statecraft was defined as the mutual adjustment of existing economic interests, uprooting so substantial a reality as slavery was much to ask. Lee Benson says aptly that Madison 0 i n lesented "an essentially fatalistic theory of politics."''- Having observed at the Convention how the existence or non-existence of slavery shaped men's politics, Madison became in 1790-1792 a victim of that very process. There was a greater irony. In contending for discrimination between original and subsequent holders of Federal securities he found himself pleading for a justice based not on the letter of the law but on the promptings of the heart: the very logic abolitionists would use to defy the Constitution Madison had helped to form, and to destroy the peculiar institution by which, not just in the last analysis but also in his analysis, Madison's own politics were shaped. Unable to summon the moral imagination required to transcend race prejudice, unwilling to contemplate social experiment which impinged on private property, too ready to rationalize their failure by a theory of economic determination, the Fathers, unhappily, ambivalently, confusedly, passed by on the other side. Their muchpraised deistic coolness of temper could not help them here. The abolitionists were right in seeing the American Revolution as a revolution betrayed.
ea

Records of the Convention, I, 533. Ibid., I, 594.

The "bridge" (July 24), ibid., II, io6; the "bargain" (August 22), ibid., II, 374 92 James Madison to Henry Clay, June, 1833, Writings of Madison, IX, 517.

Lee Benson, Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered (Glencoe, 196o), p. ioz.

93