the abolitionist critique of the constitution lynd

8/3/2019 The Abolitionist Critique of the Constitution Lynd

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15 2 Part Two I Slavery

tory, or found the uniqueness of the American story in the absenceof feudalism, while forgetting the presence of slavery.

It is past time for American historians to expose themselves tothe presence of slavery, to the full force and the pain of it. Only

then can they begin to understand the meaning for all Americanhistory of the great and terrible reality which the Founding Fathersof 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.Whatis it? Who made it? For whom and for what was it made?" SoFrederick Douglass wrote in his paper The North Star in 1849.'

It was natural for abolitionists to ask these questions. Their ef-forts to uproot the peculiar institution were continually frustratedby clauses of the United States Constitution: by Article I, Section2, which gave the South disproportionate strength in the House of Representatives by adding three-fifths of the slaves to the numberof white persons in apportioning Congressmen to the several states;

by Article I, Section 8, which gave Congress the power to suppressinsurrections; by Article I, Section 9, which postponed prohibition

I "The Constitution and Slavery," The North Star, March r6, 1849, fromThe Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, ed. Philip Toner (New York,1950), I, 362.

Reprinted from The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abo-litionists, ed. Martin Duberman (Princeton, 1 96 5), 209-239

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168 Part TwoI Sl aver y The Abolitionist Critique of the Constitution 169

[Congress], any length of time, Southward of the middle States."45In the fall of 1786, when the clash over shutting the Mississippi to

American commerce was at its height, Timothy

Bloodworth of North Carolina remarked that "it is wel known that the ballanceof Power is now in the Eastern States, and they appear determinedto keep it in that Direction." 46 This was why such Southerners asRichard.Henry Lee, later the nation's leading Antifedcralist pamphleteer, were already opposing stronger Federal powers in 1785. "Itseems to me clear, beyond doubt," Lee wrote to Madison, "that thegiving Congress a power to Legislate over the Trade of the Unionwould be dangerous in the extreme to the Southern or StapleStates, whose want of ships and seamen would expose their freight-age and their produce to a most pernicious and destructive Mo-nopoly."

47'This was a strong argument, which would be heard

throughout the South till 1861; it was this fear which in all prob-ability caused George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginiato refuse to sign the Constitution in 1787. 4 ' Recognizing the forceof Lee's argument, Madison wrote to Jefferson in the summer andfall of 1185 that commercial distress was causing a call for strongerpowers in Congress throughout the North, but that the South wasdivided. Lee was "an inflexible adversary, Grayson [William Gray-son, another Virginia Antifedcralist in 1788] unfriendly." Animos-ity against Great Britain would push the South toward commercialregulation, but the high price of tobacco would work against it."S. Carolina I am told is deliberating on the distresses of her com-merce and will probably concur in some general plan; with a pro-

' The Virginia delegates to the Governor of Virginia (Benjamin Harrison),May r3, 1784, ibid., \'II, 524.

-' Bloodworth to the Governor of North Carolina (Richard Cas-well), September z9, 1786, ibid., VIII,

47 Richard I len ry Lee to James Madison, August 11, 1785, ibid., VIII, r8r.^s See Edmund Randolph to the Speaker of the Virginia House of Dele-

gates, October io, 1787; George Mason's "Account of certain Proceedings inConvention''; 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).

vino, no doubt against any restraint from importing slaves, of whichthey have received from Africa since the peace about twelve thou-

,and." Madison concluded by telling his comrade in France that heIicinbled to think what would happen should the South not jointhe other states in strengthening Congress.49

Others beside Madison trembled at this thought: the possibilityof disunion was openly and seriously discussed in the 178o's, par-ticularly by those who knew of the fiercely sectional debates inCongress.' And if disunion was only the speculation of a few in1785, the great controversy over the Mississippi in 1786 shook manymore from their complacence.

The Mississippi question of the 1780's was a part of the largerquestion of the destiny of the West which, ultimately, would beIlse immediate cause of the Civil War. Farrand is less than accuraten i his attempt to disengage the question of the admission of new~fates at the Constitutional Convention from sectional strife. Forif there is a single key to the politics of Congress and the Conven-tion in the Critical Period, it is that the South expected the Westto be slave rather than free and to tilt the balance of power south-ward, while in Bancroft's words "an ineradicable dread of the com-ing power of the Southwest lurked in New England, especially inMassachusetts." That group in Congress recognized as "theSouthern Interest (1786), "the southern party" (1787) or "the

4a 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 fol-lowing year and V irginia's desire for a stronger federal government correspond.iugly grew.

60 See Richard Dobbs Spaight to the Governor of North Carolina (Alex-under 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 ContinentalCongress, VII, 6o2-603; VIII, 247, 282, 415-416, 462). See also James Monroeto the Governor of Virginia (Patrick Henry), August 12, 1786 and to JamesMadison, September 3, 1786 (ibid., VIII, 424-425, 461-462).

"Formation of the Constitution, II, 80.


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I hey will have their representatives in congress, and will augment

the mass of the southern statcs.54

ii to is abundantly confirmed by

the debates of the Virginia rati-Ivuig convention, 55 and still more b y Monroe's correspondencet late 1786. On August 1z, 1786, Monroe wrote from Congress to

rick Henry:

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%nIII do it, the settlements on the western waters, prevent any in future,.111(1 thereby keep the States southward as they now arcor if settle-ments will take place, that they shall be on such principles as to make11 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 population eastward and keep it there. . . .

,ike many another Southerner in the next sevent y -five years, Mon-roe ended by saying that, if it came to separation, it was essentialthat Pennsylvania join the South. ' 6 So forceful was the effect of hisletter on Henry, Madison wrote Washington in December, thatI !crry, who had hitherto advocated a stronger Union, began todraw back. By 1788 he, like Lee, Grayson, and Monroe, would bean Antifederalist.

The effect of the Mississippi squabble was that the long effortsto vest Congress with power over commerce were threatened with

failure at the very brink of success. As delegates made their way

tothe Annapolis Convention in the fall of 1786, Bloodworth of NorthCarolina wrote that because of debate on the Mississippi "all

" Otto to Vergennes, September 10, 1786, quoted in Bancroft, Formati onof the Constitution, II, 392.

' Debates in the State Conventions, III, especially the debates of June13-14, during which, for example, Grayson stated: "This contest of the Mis-sissippi involves this great national contest: That is, whether one part of thecontinent 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.

The Abolitionist Critique of the Constitution 17 117 0 Part Two I Slavery

Southern Delegation" (1788) 52 fought throughout the 178o's toforestall 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 organizationinto the largest possible number of new states. 53 It was here thatthe Mississippi question entered. What was feared if America per-mitted Spain to close New Orleans to American commerce was notonly a separation of the Western states, but a slackening of thesouthwestward migration which Southerners counted on to assuretheir long-run predominance in the Union.

"The southern states," wrote the French minister to his superio rin Europe,

are not in earnest when they assert that without the navigation of theMississippi 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 greatpreponderance of the northern states, eager to incline the balance to-ward their side; the southern neglect no opportunity of increasing thepopulation and importance of the western territory, and of drawingthither by degrees the inhabitants of New England. . .. These newterritories will gradually form themselves into separate governments;

52 James fanning to Nathan N N lay 19, 1786. Letters of ContinentalCongress, VIII, 364; Otto to Vergennes, February /o, 1787, quoted in Baycroft, Formation of the Constitution, 410; James Madison to EdmundRandolph, August 11, 1788, Letters of Continental Congress, VIII. 7S.

53 As early as Ma y I, 1782, Madison wrote in his "Observations Rclatinto the Influence of Vermont, and the Territorial Claims, on the Politics oCongress, - that the Vermont question excited in the Southern states "alhabitual jealousy of a predominance of Eastern interest." (Papers of Madison,1, 123). On June 8, 1784, I high Williamson of North Carolina wrote Jame sDuane that if Vermont were to be independent he wanted to see " at leasttwo Southern States formed at the same Time" (Letters of Continental Con -gress, VII, 347); and at the very moment when the Constitution was beingratified by state conventions, the expiring Congress squabbled bitterly orepairing the admissions of Vermont and Kentucky (ibid., VIII, 708, 71 4 , 724733, 7 4 1, 737). See the Virginia delegates to the Governor of Virginia (Ed-mund Randolph), November 3, 1787, for comment on the South's desir eto admit the Western states rapidly (ibid., VIII, 672-673).


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17 2 Part Two I Slavery The Abolitionist Critique of the Constitution 173

other Business seem to be out of View at present." "Should themeasure proposed be pursued," Grayson told the Congress, "the S.States would never grant those powers which were acknowledgedto he essential to the existence of the Union." 7 When ForeignSecretary Jay had instructions authorizing him to give up Americaninsistence on using the Mississippi river adopted by a simple Con-gressional majority of seven states it stirred in man y Southernbreasts the fear of being outvoted. Even before the Mississippiquestion came before Congress, Southerners like Monroe had in-sisted that, if Congress were to regulate commerce, commerciallaws should require the assent of nine or even eleven states. 58 Jay'sunfairness (as Southerners saw it) in using a simple majority topush through a measure fundamentally injurious to the South

greatly intensified this apprehension. When the ConstitutionalConvention met, the so-called Pinckney Plan would suggest a two-thirds Congressional majority for commercial laws, and both theVirginia ratifying convention (which voted to ratify by a smallmajority) and the North Carolina convention (which rejected rati-fication) would recommend the same amendment.59

In the midst of the Mississippi controversy, men hopeful forstronger government saw little chance of victory. Madison wroteJefferson in August 1786 that he almost despaired of strengtheningCongress through the Annapolis Convention or any other; 14 0inSeptember, Otto wrote to Vergennes: "It is to be feared that thisdiscussion will cause a great coolness between the two parties, andmay be the germ of a future separation of the southern states." 6 1

57 Timothy Bloodworth to the Governor of North Carolina (Richard Cas-well), September 4, 1786, ibid., VIII, 462; Charles Thomson, Minutes of Proceedings, August i8, 1786, ibid., VIII, 438.

58See 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 con-ventions, Debates in the State Conventions, III, 595 and IV, 241.

60James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, August 12, 1786, Writings of Mad-

ison, II, 262.61

Otto to Vergennes, September io, 1786, quoted in Bancroft, Formationof the

Constitution, II, 39 r .

I V.

Why then did the South consent to the Consti-

I^itioual Convention? If the South felt itself on the defensive in11Ie I78o's, and particularly so in the summer and fall of 1786, whydid its delegates agree to strengthen Federal powers in 1787? If at svu-thirds majority for commercial laws seemed essential to Sout h-

, ' ti ers in August of one year, why did they surrender it in Augustcif the next? Were Madison. and Washington, as they steadfastlyworked to strengthen the national government, traitors to the in-Iirests of their section, or was there some view of the future whichnationalist Southerners then entertained which enabled them to bet;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 whichgave each state one vote would have to be changed in favor of theSunth. And in letters to Jefferson, to Randolph, and to Washing-Inrn in the spring of 1787 he foretold in a sentence the essential plotOI the Convention drama. The basis of representation would bec hanged to allow representation by numbers as well as by states,because a change was "recommended to the Eastern States by theactual superiority of their populousness, and to the Southern byth 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 theSouthern & Western population should predominate, which musthappen in a few years," ha the South would be compensated for any;advantages wrung from it by the North in the meantime. "Hemust be short sighted indeed," declared King on July 12,

who does not foresee that whenever the Southern States shall be morenumerous than the Northern, they can & will hold a language that will

62 James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, March i9[18], 1787, Writings of Madison, II, 327; also same to Edmund Randolph, April 8, 1787 and toGeorge Washington, April r6, 1787 (ibid., pp. 34 0 , 345)

ccl These were the words of George Mason on July ii (Records of the Con-

vention, I, 586); see also, e.g.. Madison that same day (ibid., I, 585-586).


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174 Part Two I Slavery The Abolitionist Critique of the Constitution 17 5

awe them [the Northern States] into justice. If they threaten to sep-arate now in case injury shall be done them, will their threats be lessurgent 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 peopleof America. They must in that case include the great interiorCountry, and every thing was to be apprehended from their gettingthe power into their hands.""

This false expectation explains why Georgia and the Carolinaswho should by present population have been "small" states, consid-ered themselves "large" states at the Convention." This expectationclarifies, it seems to me, why the South gave way in its demandthat commercial laws require a two-thirds majority; for would not

ti me and the flow of migration soon provide such a majority without written stipulation? Later, at the Virginia ratifying convention,no one questioned that (as Grayson put it) "God and nature haveintended . . . that the weight of population should he on this sideof the continent."" 7 Antifederalists reasoned from this assumptionthat Virginia should wait until a Southern majority in Congressmade it safe to transfer power from the states to the national goyernment. Federalist Wilson Nicholas reasoned from the identicalpremise 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 tothe improbability and illiberality of this idea it must be supposed, thatour population, will in a short period, exceed theirs, as their countryis well settled, and we have very extensive, uncultivated tracts. Weshall 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..iages, will be very shortly in our favor."

64 Ibid., 1, 595-596.

65 Ibid., I, 604-605.66

[See Essay 8, p. 204]67

Speech of June 14, Debates in the State Conventions, III, 343." Speech of June 6, ibid., III, 121-122.

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 amongiv, would in the course of years change it in our favor. A very soundiginnent 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 nevermaterialized, and the Senate; not the IIouse, became the bulwark id the South. In 1790, the population of the South had been grow-ing 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 soahead of the Southern that by 1820 the white population of

Noilliern states and territories was almost twice that of Southern1.11es and territories. Thus the South never obtained the Congres-

%tonal majority which statesmen of both sections had anticipatedtlu: 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 thePotomac and the James to "a Philadelphia or a Baltimore" on theVnginia coast. 7 It was not, as it so often seems, an accident thatI he Convention of 1787 grew from the Annapolis Convention, orIIwt Virginians were the prime movers in calling both. Throughoutthe 1780's Madison, Jefferson, Monroe, and to an almost fanatical

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

H 1.I8.


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176 Part TwoI Sl aver yThe Abolitionist Critique of the Constitution 177

degree, Washington, were intent on strengthening the commercialties between Virginia and the West. As earl y as 1784, Jefferson suggested to Madison cooperation with Maryland in opening con,munication to the West, and during that year and the next bothWashington and Monroe toured the Western country with theirgrand 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 iiiseparate states" and help Virginia to beat out Penns y lvania acidNew York in the race for Western trade. 72 Virginia had given ul)its claims to Western land, but its leaders hoped for a commercialdominion 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 wayfor them, and then see what an influx of articles will be pouredupon us; how amazingly our exports will be encreased by them,and how amply we shall be compensated for any trouble and cxpence we may encounter to effect it." r ' The West, then, wouldnot only give the South political predominance but also, as Macli.son wrote Jefferson, "double the value of half the lands within theCommonwealth, ... extend its commerce, link with its intereststhose of the Western States, and lessen the emmigration of itsCitizens." This was the castle-in-the-air which Virginians pictured

71

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 wellas 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 \'irginia (Benjamin Ilarrison), June ii, 1784, ibid., A'II, i5o.73

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Februar y 2o, 1 784, Papers of Jef- ferson, 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 Madi-son, II, 109.

icy worked to bring about the Constitutional Convention, thisIlu' plan for economic development so abruptly and t raumat i-

11v 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 cloudsfill Ilse horizon. The Constitutional Convention, with a Southern1iii Ii Pity (in Bancroft's words) "from its organization to its dissolu-1 1 1 ui 16 seemed to have wrought well for the South. Madison alone,l i mn his vantage-point in Congress, fretted about that body's con-Iumcd 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 "countenanceI, sonic of the most popular arguments which have been inculcatedI' v vIl c southern antifederalists," and "be regarded as at once a1-mof of the preponderancy of the Eastern strength." "I foreseeintentions," he wrote the next Spring, "first between federal andmill -fed er al parties, and then between northern and southern

I ,,i tics."' 7 Before long he would be leading the opposition.

Even this sampling of the printed sources suggestsII^at sectional conflict based (to quote Madison once more) on "theinstitution of slavery and its consequences" was a potent force inth e shaping of the Constitution. The conclusion seems inescapableI hat any interpretation of the Convention which stresses realty and

711 Bancroft, Formation of the Constitution, II, 75. The South had a major-ily in the Convention because Rhode Island did not send a delegation, theNew Hampshire delegation came late, and the New York delegation leftiii rly.

77 James Madison to George Washington, August 24, 1788 and September^.t,1788, Letters of Continental Congress, VIII, 786, 795-796; letter byMadison (otherwise unidentified), March 6, 1789, quoted in Bancroft, Forma-

(mu of the Constitution, II, 358-


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17 8 Part Two Slavery The A bolitionist Critique of the Constitution179

personalty, large states and small states, or monarchy and dcmocracy, but leaves slavery out, is an inadequate interpretation.

Scholarly effort to bring slavery back into the story of the Rcvolutionary and Early , National periods might do worse than beginwith those much-maligned exponents of the abolitionist critiqueHorace Greeley and Henry Wilson. They, like Beard, believed thata counterrevolution took place, but they saw as its victim the slay(rather than the white artisan or farmer. Moreover, they viewed thecounterrevolution not as a sudden coup d'etat in the years 17871788, but as a long-drawn-out process which drew strength fromthe fatal concessions (as Wilson called them) of the Conventionbut required such events as the cotton gin and the Louisiana Pmchase for its completion.

Crude though they may be, these early abolitionist historianshave the power to show us familiar events in a new light. Theyknew that Adams would have been President in 1800 had the threefifths clause not existed, and they understood why the HartfordConvention made the abrogation of that clause the first plank o

platform. They viewed the accession of Jefferson as a triumphfor slavery; in their accounts the Louisiana Purchase figures not asa diplomatic triumph or an instance of loose Constitutional construction, but as an event by which slavery acquired "a vast extension of its power and influcnce." 8 They were fully aware of thepart which Southern fear of a San Domingo in Cuba played in thegenesis of the Monroe Doctrine, and in the American reaction tothe Panama Congress. 79 No doubt all these insights are half-truthsbut they arc half-truths which have been neglected in this centuryand deserve to be reincorporated into the mainstream of scholarl yinterpretation.

If it be granted that sectional conflict based on slavery was realand intense long before 1820, our final evaluation of the abolitionist critique of the United States Constitution will still depend on

78 Greeley, A merican Confl ict, I, 57.79 See especially Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave

Power in America (Boston, 1872), I, 115-117.

how we answer the question, Could the Revolution have abolished

%lit very?It came very close. During the Revolutionary War the importa-

tion of slaves ceased. In 1779 the Continental Congress agreedmialtimously to arm 3,000 slaves in South Carolina and Georgia,with freedom as a reward. In 1784 Congress failed by one vote to

i nohibit slavery in the Western territories.s " These facts support

oil I Iolst in his remark that "but one more impulse was needed."81Huey Brackett, writing in 1889, 'suggested the sense of lost possi-

1,1 lilies that was felt when the South Carolina and Georgia legisla-

t Ines refused to adopt the plan to enlist slaves of the Deep South

Against the British:

It was on hearing of the failure of this plan that Washington wrote,that spirit of freedom which had so strongl y marked the beginning

(of the war, had subsided. It is private not public interest, he added,

which influences the generality of mankind .82

Many abolitionists, concerned to identify their cause with thecharisma of the Founding Fathers, contended that at the time of the Convention all public men expected slavery to die a naturaldeath. This was far from the case. As Hildrcth observed a centuryago, the delegates from Georgia and South Carolina did not expectslavery to end: "S. Carolina & Georgia," Madison reported toJefferson, "were inflexible on the point of slaves."

83 Nor is it safe

8 The 1779 and 1784 episodes arc described by Alden, Southin 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

Constitutional History Of The United States In The Formative Period,1775-

1789, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (Boston and New York, 1889), p. 311. Theletter paraphrased was written to Lt. Col. John Laurens, July 1o, 1782, andwill be found in Washington's Writings, XXIV, 421.

83 Hildreth, Despotism in America, p. 5o4; James Madison to Thomas Jef-

ferson, October 24, 1787, Records of the Convention, III, 135. For confirm-

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 DeepSouth attitude was one reason a Bill of Rights was omitted from the Con-

stitution (ibid., II, 137 and III, 256).


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identical assumptions about the place of property in society drovethem to similar conclusions. Thus, in the Convention debates of July 5 and 6, Morris declared that "life and liberty were generallysaid to be of more value, than property," but that "an accurate viewof the matter would nevertheless prove that property was the mainobject of Society." 89 This was a view which the South Carolinianscould only echo. What it came down to was, as Charles CotesworthPinckney put it, that "property in slaves should not be exposed todanger under a Govt. instituted for the protection of property.""And so, while Morris stated on July 11 that if compelled to do in-

justice to human nature or the southern states, he must do it tothe latter, that same evening he worked out the formula propor-toning representation to direct taxation which proved a "bridge"

to the three-fifths compromise; and in August it was he who pro-posed what he termed a "bargain" between North and South overslave importation.91

As late as 1833, Madison could write that the good faith of theNorth was "sufficiently guarantied by the interest they have, asmerchants, as Ship owners, and as manufacturers, in preserving aUnion with the slaveholding states." 92 But apart from interest, thebelief that private property was the indispensable foundation forpersonal freedom made it more difficult for Northerners to con-front the fact of slavery squarely.

A third, more subtle reason for the failure of nerve of the Found-

ing Fathers when confronting slavery, was precisely that economicrealism which Beard so much admired. Harrington's "balance"warred uneasily in their minds with Locke's law "writ in the heartsof mankind." They knew only too well that "power follows prop-

89 Records of the Convention, I, 533.

99 Ibid., I, 594.

91The "bridge" (July 24), ibid., II, io6; the "bargain" (August 22), ibid.,

II, 37492

James Madison to Henry Clay, June, 1833, Writings of Madison, IX,517.

ea 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 Madisoninlesented "an essentially fatalistic theory of politics."''- 0 Having ob-served at the Convention how the existence or non-existence of slavery shaped men's politics, Madison became in 1790-1792 avictim of that very process. There was a greater irony. In contend-ing for discrimination between original and subsequent holders of Federal securities he found himself pleading for a justice based noton the letter of the law but on the promptings of the heart: thevery logic abolitionists would use to defy the Constitution Madisonhad helped to form, and to destroy the peculiar institution bywhich, not just in the last analysis but also in his analysis, Madi-son's own politics were shaped.

Unable to summon the moral imagination required to transcendrace prejudice, unwilling to contemplate social experiment whichimpinged on private property, too ready to rationalize their failureby a theory of economic determination, the Fathers, unhappily,ambivalently, confusedly, passed by on the other side. Their much-praised deistic coolness of temper could not help them here. Theabolitionists were right in seeing the American Revolution as arevolution betrayed.

93 Lee Benson, Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsid-ered (Glencoe, 196o), p. ioz.

18 2 Part Two I SlaveryThe Abolitionist Critique of the Constitution 18 3

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