What role did the issue of slavery play at the Constitutional Convention?

0:04I think that one of the most important contributions, made over the last 20 or 30 years in the profession, is a recognition that the issue of slavery is, you can't ignore it. In other words, it has to be part of an agenda to understand what happened in the convention and in the founding itself. Realized from the start what we said that this is going to be a Hail Mary pass for a new federal government that has powers to make domestic policy and foreign policy.

0:36To the extent that it succeeded, it would then have the power to make a decision on the slavery issue. But the slavery issue is so divisive, and it's not the first time it came up. It came up at the start of the war, it's in the summer of 76. It came up in the debate over something called the Dickinson draft on a projected government for the United States after we declare independence, and it's clear from the start in that debate that the states that are slave states and the Northern states that are not predominantly slave are in fundamental disagreement about this. It's clear at the end, they can't reach any agreement. The net result is a recommendation that eventually produces the Articles of Confederation, where power does reside in the states.

1:28But if they had faced squarely and insisted frontally on a resolution of the slavery question in 76, the Southwood has seceded or the Southwood has stopped supporting the movement for independence. The feeling in the Congress was that the same principle held true in 1787. If we attack slavery frontally, if we insist on this, every state South of the Chesapeake will secede.

2:00I'm not sure about Virginia. I think Virginia is a question mark, but North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia are going to bolt. I think in the deliberations outside the convention, in restaurants and bars, the Southern delegates got together and formed a coalition that said, we're going to threaten secession if slavery is not protected.

2:25If the slave trade is not allowed to continue, and that we're going to refuse to budge on this. If you're a absolute moralist on this, any compromise with the South is unacceptable. What's the later a bit call a compromise with death? No compromise meant the end of the convention. The Southern delegates also said, well, even if we go along with this, I can assure you when I go back to South Carolina or Georgia, it's never going to be ratified. We cannot exist without slavery. Our economy cannot exist. The answer to that could have been the proposal that Franklin was supposed to read, but didn't. We grant you for now slavery. But the slave trade will have to end at a certain point, 1,800 was the original idea, and you have to recognize that over time, slavery must go out of existence. We're not going to put a date on. That didn't happen because even that was regarded as too threatening. What the moralists have to come to terms with is the answer to the following question. Suppose they did what the Quakers wanted them to do. What would have happened? Well, in 1787,

3:46you wouldn't have any state South of Virginia. You wouldn't have had a union in that road. Well, what would they have done? They would have formed their own country.