Constitution Address Slavery

The constitution addresses slavery in three major ways. Through the Constitution, Congress was not able to prohibit the import of slaves across the Atlantic for approximately 20 years after the Founding Fathers wrote the constitution. There was also the Three-Fifths Clause of the Constitution, which allows three-fifths of the enslaved population of slave-holding states to be counted in the overall state population. The Constitution also addresses slavery through the Fugitive Slave Act, which was a law passed that provided the return of slaves that escaped from one state to another. The Constitution was a proslavery document that supported an unbalance of power in America.

Though the words “slave” or “slavery” never appear in

the Constitution, the writers of the Constitution only engrained a deeper sense of injustice in American life. The mere difference of skin color, the idea that black inferiority was somehow innate, was embedded in American writing. Jefferson writes, “The opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence.” For twenty years Congress was prohibited the power of abolishing Atlantic Slave Trade. On January 1, 1808, slaves were no longer allowed to be imported across the Atlantic. However, in the meantime, over 100,000 slaves were imported to America through the Atlantic Slave Trade in order not only replace slaves that escaped to the British during the revolution, but also to provide wage-free labor for the expansion of fertile land west of the coast.

The Three-Fifths Clause was a provision signed into the Constitution allowing three-fifths of the slave population to be counted to determine each state’s representation in the House of Representatives, and in affect its number of votes in the electoral college.

This gave the White, free south far more power than their population should’ve allowed. Sixty percent of the population these states were credited, slaves, were allowed no rights at all. It could be said that some condemned slavery. “Where we have excited murders, robberies, and burning, that we might punish them in our own land with endless, hopeless slavery. Declaration of Independence! Where art thou now?” This question was rightfully asked in reflection of the actions of Americans. The speaker points out that the very values on which the country stands-independence, freedom, and liberty-were being neglected by its very

people.

The final, most significant, component of slavery in the Constitution was the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act. This put a metaphorical “leash” on slaves in that even if a slave escaped from his/her slave state into a state where slavery was abolished, it was that state’s obligation to return the slave. The Constitution gave the government no power to “interfere” with slavery in the states (abolish it), but managed to in fact enforced it with the Fugitive Slave Act.
The Constitution was a proslavery document.

It is not that the Constitution explicitly encouraged slavery, but slavery was carefully and artistically justified in the document. The constitution did so in three major ways. First, it withheld the power of the government to impose or interfere with the institution of slavery for 20 years. While this did not enforce slavery, it took a passive approach to it. Next, the Three-Fifths Clause took advantage of the institution of slavery in that it gave slave holding states the ability to include sixty percent of their slave population to gain representation and electoral votes. This could be said to have encouraged slavery in that states with large a slave population were given more power in politics. Lastly the Fugitive Slave Act was the best example of how the constitution carefully policed slavery. It is “an act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters". Nowhere is slavery explicitly noted because of the connotation it would have on the general public. Along with this, many of the authors of the Constitution were in fact slaveholders, which suggests they either preferred the institution of slavery, or genuinely believed that “We the people” was exclusive to only white, landowning men. It can be argued that since the Constitution did not explicitly address slavery that it is not a proslavery document, however any document that justifies and/or ignores the institution cannot be

considered “anti slavery”, therefore it's considered the former.