No other delegate spoke up as strongly against slavery as Morris or Mason, but some seemed opposed to "slave power" in one way or another.
Elbridge Gerry (Massachusetts): Elbridge
Gerry said little on North-South issues.
He opposed any slave representation, saying that slaves should no more
be the rule of representation in the South than horses and cattle in the North and listed slave representation as one of his reasons for
refusing to sign the Constitution. With regard to importation of slaves, he
somewhat ambiguously said, “We had nothing to do with the conduct of States as
to Slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any sanction to it.” Apparently, this meant that he did not take
any moral responsibility for states that owned slaves, but did not want any
explicit protection of slavery in the Constitution. He agreed with the South that an export tax
might be applied discriminatorily against one section of the country, or used to coerce or compel states. Gerry did not speak on navigation acts
although, like all New Englanders, he presumably regarded them as critically
important.
William Paterson (New Jersey): The only
North-South issue William Paterson addressed was the issue of slave
representation, which he opposed. Representation, he said, is a substitute for the entire population
meeting as a legislature, which, of course, is not possible. “If such a meeting of the people was actually
to take place, would the slaves vote?
They would not. When then shd
they be represented.” He also said that including states in
representation would encourage slave importation, and pointed out that the
Articles of Confederation had twisted themselves into knots to avoid actually
saying slave, a practice the Constitution continued.
John Dickinson (Delaware): John Dickinson
“considered it as inadmissible on every principle of honor & safety that
the importation of slaves should be authorized to the States by the
Constitution” and made clear that he considered the issue to be a national and
not a state one. In response to Charles
Pinckney, who said that Greece, Rome, England, France and Holland all allowed
slaves, Dickinson replied that all these societies experienced more harm than
good from slavery. At
the very least, he wanted importation to be limited to states (North Carolina,
South Carolina and Georgia) that currently permitted slaves to be imported. When the Constitution
said that representation and direct taxation would be apportioned by the
3/5 rule, Dickinson unsuccessfully moved to remove “direct taxation,” although
removing the reference to taxation would certainly make the rule less palatable. He opposed a complete
ban on export taxes, proposing instead to exempt certain items and believed that Congress should be required to approve inspection fees
on exports to prevent states from disguising export taxes as inspection fees.
Rufus King (Massachusetts): Rufus King’s overall position was not so much opposition to any one concession to the South
as to the cumulative weight of all of them.
Protecting the importation of slaves, including them in representation,
pledging states to protect each other, and forbidding a tax on the exports that
slaves produced were all too much.
Shall all the States then be bound to
defend each; & shall each be at liberty to introduce a weakness which will
render defence (sic.) more difficult?
Shall one part of the U.S. be bound to defend another part, and that
other part be at liberty not only to increase its own danger, but to withhold
compensation for the burden?
King said he was not sure he could assent to protecting the
importation of slaves under any circumstances, but at the very least he would
not agree to their importation and representation. “At all events, either slave should not be
represented, or exports should be taxed.”
This would seem
to imply that slave importation was the point he was most willing to
concede. He also said that the Northern
states would never agree to make all imports taxable except for slaves. Nonetheless, he
ultimately went along with the same devil’s bargain as the other New
Englanders. King’s views on slave
representation were somewhat ambiguous – he said he opposed representation by
population because it would mean including slaves, yet he
also agreed that the South should have greater representation because of its
greater wealth.
Luther Martin (Maryland): It was Luther
Martin who first proposed to remove the passage that protected slave
importation. The reasons he gave were
(1) including slaves in representation would encourage representation, (2)
slaves weakened one part of the Union that others were bound to protect, and
(3) “it was inconsistent with the principles of the revolution and dishonorable
to the American character to have such a feature in the Constitution.” Presumably it was that last argument that
carried the most weight with Martin.
Martin, as an extreme state sovereignty man, wanted representation to be
by states instead of by population, and therefore he had not position on slave
representation. It is probably
significant, though, that he did not protest slave representation; as a
Maryland delegate he was, after all, a Southerner. He also took the Southern viewpoint on
commercial regulations, seconding a motion to require a two-thirds vote for all
commercial regulations, internal or external.
Unlike
Mason, Martin appeared ready to put his hatred of slavery even above his fear
of federal authority. At Maryland’s ratification convention, he not only damned the Constitution for protecting
slave trade and called for a prohibition on it, but said he wanted to “authorize
the general government from time to time, to make such regulations as should be
thought most advantageous for the gradual abolition of slavery,
and the emancipation of the slaves where are already in the
States.” So said the foremost advocate of states
rights at the Constitutional Convention, on a subject that everyone else was
eager to punt to the states! (Whether he
actually meant it was just trying to score any possible point against the
Constitution a different question).
