North-South Issue: A Chronology of Debate

Of the five north-south issues mentioned before, the issue of returning fugitive slaves was not controversial.  Pierce Butler of South Carolina proposed that a fugitive slave be returned on the same terms as a criminal.  James Wilson and Roger Sherman made rather tepid protests, and the issue was dropped.  The next day, the issue was again proposed and a requirement to return a fugitive slave, euphemistically referred to as a “person bound to service or labor by the laws of a state,” was adopted without opposition. 

            The other four issues were more controversial.  The issue of slave representation was the first to be addressed.  I learned in school that the Northern states wanted to include slaves in taxation but not representation and the Southern states wanted to include slaves in represenation but not taxation.  This is an oversimplification.  When the Articles of Confederation were originally drawn up, the central government had no power to collect taxes, but would collect them in quotas from the states.  Originally, each state’s quota was to be based on the value of land in the state.  When land values proved too vague to be useable, each state’s quota was made proportional to its population.  This raised the question of whether it would be proportional to a states’ total population or only its free population.  Naturally, Southern states wanted to include only free population and Northern states wanted to include total population.  As a compromise, it was agreed to include free population and three-fifths of all slaves, euphemistically using the phrase:

 The whole number of white and other free Citizens and inhabitants of every age, sex and condition including those bound to servitude for a term of years and three-fifths of all other persons not comprehended in the foregoing description, except Indians not paying taxes. 

            During the Constitutional Convention, controversy arose over how representation would be apportioned in the lower house.  Some delegates proposed free population; some proposed tax revenue and some, especially from South Carolina, where slaves made up an absolute majority of the population, proposed wealth.  As a compromise, Charles Pinckney and James Wilson proposed the same formula used for tax revenue under the Articles.  This time it was the Deep South that wanted all slaves to be counted and the North that wanted them entirely excluded, and each side accused the other of hypocrisy for reversing its position from what it had been when the issue was taxation.  Gouverneur Morris then proposed that they reduce controversy by saying that direct taxation would be proportional to representation, and James Wilson suggested that they could reduce resistance further by saying that representation would be proportional to taxation .  This would make it appear that states were being taxed by the 3/5 formula and represented according to the taxes they paid.  Seen that way, the three-fifths rule appears almost reasonable except for one thing.  The new government was not intended to be financed either by tax quotas raised from states or from “direct” taxes, i.e., a fixed tax per head on all free individuals and 3/5 of all slaves.  It would be financed primarily by import taxes and secondarily by a variety of sales taxes.  “Direct” taxes would make up only a tiny fraction of its total revenue, and often not even that.  The linking of taxation and representation was pure window dressing that both Morris and Wilson later criticized.

            Up August 6, 1787, the Constitution was merely a series of resolutions which gave the central government all powers for which the individual states are not competent.  On August 6, 1787 a committee got together and prepared an actual first draft of the Constitution, which identified the specific powers of the general government and forbade certain powers to the states.  It also contained three important concessions to the South:

(1)               Although Congress could regulate foreign trade, it could not stop the “migration or importation of such persons as the states see fit to admit,” i.e., slaves, or tax their import;

(2)               Exports could not be taxed;

(3)               No navigation act could be passed without a two-thirds majority.

A navigation act is a law controlling shipping.  What Northern states hoped for and Southern states feared was that the federal government would require the South to export its produce on American, i.e. Northern, ships.  England, previously the colonies’ main trading partner, had closed all of the British Empire to American shipping, which had been a severe blow to the trade-dependent New England states.  New Englanders wanted to give Congress the authority to regulate foreign trade in order to retaliate and force open British ports, and to require Southerners to send their exports on American ships as a substitute field of trade.  Southerners feared that Northern merchants would strangle them with high prices and monopolies.  Outnumbered in both houses, they wanted to require a two-thirds vote in order to have a veto on such laws.  Since only South Carolina and Georgia really wanted to keep importing slaves, requiring a two-thirds or even three-quarters vote would not protect slave importation; only an absolute ban would suffice.  The South also feared an export tax, not only because it produced most of the U.S. exports, but because an export tax could easily be made discriminatory.  Virginia had another reason to oppose a federal export tax – a tax on tobacco exports was one of its major sources of revenue, and most people assumed that an export tax would be exercised either by the federal government or the states.

            Debate on these issues became hotter than on any issue other than representation. The New England states threatened to secede unless Congress was given complete power to regulate foreign trade by a simple majority.  The New England states were strong, their delegates boasted, and had their own ships to defend themselves.  They could stand on their own.  The Southern states, without ships, would were vulnerable to attack and should therefore support a navigation act that would encourage New England shipbuilding for national defense. South Carolina and Georgia, on the other hand, argued that they could not do without slaves and threatened to secede if their slave imports were cut off.  In the end, these issues were sent to a committee that worked out a sectional compromise.  Slave importation would be protected up to 1808, and slaves could be taxed at a limited rate.  Neither the federal government nor the states could tax exports.  Navigation acts and regulations of foreign trade would require only a simple majority.  In effect, New England and the Deep South shook hands on these issues behind Virginia’s back.  The votes on these issues are revealing.  On the importation of slaves, all New England states joined with the Deep South to approve it, with the Upper South and the Quaker states opposing.  On the regulation of foreign trade, every Northern state supported regulation by a simple majority.  Of the Southern states, only South Carolina broke ranks.  A sectional compromise had been reached, and the Virginians fumed in vain.

            Those four issues, slave representation, slave importation, export taxes and navigation acts, were the four great sectional issues that divided the Convention.  On most other issues, sectional differences were most significant for their absence, but there were a few other issues that showed sectional pattern. 

            One difference, noted before, is that the southern states were the most nationalistic.  Virginia and the states southward were the ones that consistently favored the Virginia Plan over the New Jersey Plan and opposed equality in the Senate.

            Another was that the delegates representing the commercial elite, i.e., almost all New Englanders and Gouverneur Morris, speaking for the merchants of New York and Philadelphia, opposed admitting Western states on an equal basis or setting a firm rule for reapportioning representation as population shifted.  Virginians were the foremost advocates of the West, with the South Carolina skeptical about the West, but not as hostile as New England.  Why? 

            One of the most basic reasons was the one discussed in the last paper, that population in the South was growing faster than in the North and Southerners therefore believed they would benefit from future reapportionments and New England expected to lose.  But that does not explain their attitudes toward the West.  Quite simply, members of the commercial elite feared the West.  They saw themselves already a minority, commercial, seafaring and outward looking, outnumbered by a majority that was agricultural, land-based and inward looking.  The more the country expanded, the more agricultural, land-based and inward looking it would be and the more the commercial interest would be outnumbered.  Virginians had the opposite perspective, agricultural, land-based and distrustful of merchants.  Furthermore, Virginia included the present state of Kentucky and had potentially immense land claims west of the Appalachians.  Although Virginia was already planning to give up these enormous land claims, an extraordinary act of statesmanship, even the potential claims led the Virginias to be particularly inward-looking and see the West as their natural agricultural allies against commercial New England.  Strictly speaking, this did not make a great deal of sense.  Throughout all the larger states there was strong conflict between western farmers and eastern elites, and this conflict was just as strong in the South, where the eastern elites consisted of planters as in the North, where the eastern elites were merchants.  This may, perhaps, explain why South Carolina was not as strong a champion of the West as Virginia; conflict between eastern planters and western farmers in South Carolina was particularly strong.  Besides, South Carolina’s rice plantations were obviously restricted to coastal swamps; Virginia’s tobacco plantations had better chances to expand.*

            One final difference was that New Englanders were most inclined to favor very short terms for office holders, especially one-year terms for the House of Representatives.  Very short terms were an old New England tradition, going back to colonial times.  Keeping in mind that Massachusetts and Connecticut were the only New England states present at the time, consider the delegates who spoke up for a one-year term in the House – Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Caleb Strong of Massachusetts, Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman of Connecticut – and James Wilson of Pennsylvania.  A proposal for a three-year term in the House was opposed by only three states, Massachusetts, Connecticut – and South Carolina.  Massachusetts and Connecticut were holding out for a one-year term.  South Carolina, whose officials all served two-year terms, wanted a two year term, which would be more convenient for their political cycle.**

            On other issues, sectional differences were most noticeable for their absence.  

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*All of this, incidentally, was the beginning of a trend.  Generally speaking, the South was the most expansionist part of the United States and New England the least.  Many New Englanders even opposed the Louisiana Purchase, fearing that the vast increase in territory would mean more agricultural, land-based, inward looking people increasingly overwhelming the commercial interest.  They also bitterly opposed the War of 1812, even to the point of contemplating secession, because the war included an attempt to conquer Canada.  Following the War of 1812, Southerners wanted the government to give away Western land for free, which would have promoted westward expansion, while New Englanders favored restricted sales, which would have discouraged expansion.  The pattern held even during the Mexican-American War, with the South favoring the war and New England opposing conquest of the Southwest, even though it was clear by that time that the real difference was not between agricultural and commercial states, but between slave and free states and that the land in question was unlikely to be amenable to slavery.  Throughout the 1850’s Southerners cast a covetous eye on Cuba and Central America and new places to expand.  When the South ultimately seceded in 1860, it was for the same reason that New England contemplated secession during the War of 1812, a fear that they were a permanent and ever-shrinking minority being overwhelmed by an every growing majority.  But Southerners reacted to a permanent minority status by desperately seeking to expand; New Englanders by desperately seeking to block expansion.  Both regions were ultimately acting against their own interests; most of the land the United States acquired (or tried to acquire in the War of 1812) was unsuited for slavery.  If New Englanders had managed to stop all expansion, the balance between slave and free states would have been easier to maintain than it ultimately became.

**David Hackett Fischer used this division to show strong sectional differences at the Constitutional Convention.  I do not agree with him in this case.  This was, indeed, a section difference, but it was unusual in that regard.