The structure of government was not the only source of debate at the Constitutional Convention. As Madison recorded, “the institution of slavery and its implications” divided the delegates at many sessions. Those who gathered in Philadelphia included numerous slaveholders, as well as some dedicated advocates of abolition. Madison, like Jefferson a Virginia slaveholder who detested slavery, told the convention that the “distinction of color” had become the basis for “the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.” Yet he later assured the Virginia ratifying convention that the Constitution offered slavery “better security than any that now exists.”
The words “slave” and “slavery” did not appear in the Constitution—a concession to the sensibilities of delegates who feared they would “contaminate the glorious fabric of American liberty.” As Luther Martin of Maryland wrote, his fellow delegates “anxiously sought to avoid the admission of expressions which might be odious to the ears of Americans.” But, he continued, they were “willing to admit into their system those things which the expressions signified.” The document prohibited Congress from abolishing the African slave trade for twenty years. It required states to return to their owners fugitives from bondage. And it provided that three-fifths of the slave population would be counted in determining each state’s representation in the House of Representatives and its electoral votes for president.
This advertisement for the sale of 100 slaves from Virginia to states farther south appeared in a Richmond newspaper only a few months after the signing of the Constitution. Slavery was a major subject of debate at the Constitutional Convention.
South Carolina’s delegates had come to Philadelphia determined to defend slavery, and they had a powerful impact on the final document. They originated the fugitive slave clause, the three-fifths clause, and the electoral college. They insisted on strict limits on the power of Congress to levy taxes within the states, fearing future efforts to raise revenue by taxing slave property. They threatened disunion if the Atlantic slave trade were prohibited immediately, as the New England states and Virginia, with its abundance of native-born slaves, demanded. Their threats swayed many delegates. Gouverneur Morris, one of Pennsylvania’s delegates, declared that he was being forced to decide between offending the southern states or doing injustice to “human nature.” For the sake of national unity, he said, he would choose the latter.