Debating Slavery and the Constitution
Nikole Hannah-Jones (NY Times)
Nikole Hannah-Jones: “Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written. Black Americans fought to make them true. Without this struggle, America would have no democracy at all.” (1619 Project, p. 14)
Gordon Wood: “Although modern historians express frustration with the slowness and ragged nature of the Revolutionaries’ struggles to end slavery in the states, the fact that it had been legal everywhere in colonial North America and had existed for millennia throughout the world make the scale and the unprecedented nature of the anti-slavery movements in the new republics look relatively impressive. Looking back from our present perspective, we find the states’ antislavery efforts to be puny, partial, and disappointing, but from the perspective of colonial society in, say, 1720, when slavery existed everywhere without substantial challenge, the Revolutionary achievement that began a half century later appears extraordinary and exciting. This move to end slavery was brought about by the efforts of many blacks as well as whites.” (Power and Liberty, p. 113)
Nikole Hannah-Jones: “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact
that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” (1619 Project, p. 18)
Gordon Wood: “With independence, nearly all the newly independent states, including Virginia, began moving against slavery, initiating what became the first great antislavery movement in world history.” (Power and Liberty, p. 112)
Nikole Hannah-Jones: “Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals…. My father…knew what it would take me years to understand: that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776. That black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true ‘‘founding fathers.’’And that no people has a greater claim to that flag than us.” (1619 Project, p. 17)
Debating Slavery at the Constitutional Convention
July 9, 1787
JOHN DICKINSON (DE): What will be said of this new principle of founding a Right to govern Freemen on a power derived from Slaves … The omitting the Word will be regarded as an Endeavour to conceal a principle of which we are ashamed.
August 22, 1787
ROGER SHERMAN (CT) was for leaving the clause as it stands. He disapproved of the slave trade; yet as the States were now possessed of the right to import slaves, as the public good did not require it to be taken from them, & as it was expedient to have as few objections as possible to the proposed scheme of Government, he thought it best to leave the matter as we find it. He observed that the abolition of Slavery seemed to be going on in the U. S. & that the good sense of the several States would probably by degrees compleat it. He urged on the Convention the necessity of despatching its business.
JOHN DICKINSON (DE) considered it as inadmissible on every principle of honor & safety that the importation of slaves should be authorised to the States by the Constitution. The true question was whether the national happiness would be promoted or impeded by the importation, and this question ought to be left to the National Govt. not to the States particularly interested…. He could not believe that the Southn. States would refuse to confederate on the account apprehended; especially as the power was not likely to be immediately exercised by the Genl. Government.
JOHN RUTLEDGE (SC): If the Convention thinks that N. C. S. C. & Georgia will ever agree to the plan, unless their right to import slaves be untouched, the expectation is vain. The people of those States will never be such fools as to give up so important an interest.
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