Other Anti-Slavery Delegates

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).