South Carolina: Premier Defender of Slavery

The most stubborn defenders of slavery were, of course, the South Carolina delegation.  They were occasionally joined by a colleague from Georgia, but South Carolina took the lead.  The issue the South Carolinians were most insistent on was slave importation, followed by slave representation.  They were willing to make concessions on commercial regulations to gain northern votes on slavery.  South Carolina appears to have been the only Southern state willing to give ground on this issue, presumably because slavery was more important to them.

John Rutledge:  John Rutledge served on the Committee of Detail that drew up the first draft of the Constitution and was presumably responsible for the three provisions that favored the South.  He made no attempt to morally defend the importation of slaves, “Religion & humanity had nothing to do with this question.  Interest alone is the governing principle with nations.”  Quite simply, he said, the Deep South would not join the Union unless their importation of slaves was secured.  To sweeten the deal, he offered to excuse other states from protecting the South from slave insurrections, and pointed out the increasing slave would increase southern produce that northern ships could transport.  But the Deep South would never be “such fools as to give up so important an interest.” He was also willing to make concessions on a navigation act.  The power would not necessarily be abused, and in any event, and at worst it would only bear a little hard on the South.  A navigation act would be necessary to secure the West India trade.  He also called for a provision against any constitutional amendment that would disrupt the compromise protecting slave trade until 1808.

Pierce Butler:  It was Pierce Butler who proposed requiring fugitive slaves to be extradited between states on the same terms as criminals.  He also moved to include all slaves in representation:

[He] insisted that the labour of a slave in S. Carola was as productive & valuable as that of a freeman in Masst, that as wealth was the great meand of defence and utility to the Nation they were equally valuable to it with freemen; that the consequently representation ought to be allowed for them in a Government which was instituted principally for the protection of property, and was itself to be supported by property.

He also opposed export taxes.  He also joined his other South Carolina colleagues in supporting the sectional compromise between New England and South Carolina; he said the interests of the “Eastern” and Southern states were as different as Russia and Turkey, but he would agree to allow navigation acts by a simple majority in the interest of conciliation.  Butler was very clear about South Carolina’s interests, “The security the Southn States want is that their negroes may not be taken from them, which some gentlemen within or without doors, have a very good mind to do.”

   Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (General Pinckney):  Charles Cotesworth Pinckney favored including all slaves in representation and was willing to include all slaves in taxation to win the privilege.  He also opposed taxing exports and saw the two as linked:

S. Carolina has in one year exported to the amount of  600,000 pounds Sterling all of which was the fruit of the labor of her blacks.  Will she be represented in proportion to this amount?  She will not.  Neither ought she to be subject to a tax on it.

General Pinckney was especially clear in pointing out that Virginia’s motives in opposing slave trade were not altogether altruistic, “As to Virginia she will gain by stopping the importations.  Her slaves will rise in value & she has more than she wants.”  The Deep South could not do without slaves, and would not agree to the Constitution without protection of slave importation, even if the entire delegation agreed to it.  Like Butler, he argued that slaves would increase exports and shipping.  He would agree to let slaves be taxed like other imports, but a prohibition on slave imports would exclude South Carolina from the Union.  The original proposed compromise would have protected slave trade until 1800; General Pinckney moved to extend it to 1808 and Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts, in accordance with the sectional compromise, seconded the motion.  In turn, he upheld South Carolina’s half of the bargain.  Although he said it was in the interest of the Southern states to have no regulations on commerce, considering New England’s “liberal conduct” toward South Carolina and the interest of the “weak” southern states to be united with the “strong Eastern States,” he would agree to allowing commercial regulations by a simple majority. 

            Like the others, General Pinckney was very protective of South Carolina’s interest in slaves.  He was even uneasy about the Constitutional provision that “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States,” wanting some provision in favor of property in slaves.

Charles Pinckney (Mr. Pinckney):  Charles Pinckney offered the only speech approaching a moral defense of slavery in the Constitutional Convention:

If slavery be wrong, it is justified by the example of all the world.  He cited the case of Greece Rome & other antient States; the sanction given by France England, Holland & other modern States.  In all ages one half mankind have been slaves.  

Yet at the same time he said that left to herself, South Carolina would probably end slave importations, and that he himself would support such a law, and also, quite contradictorily, that South Carolina would never agree to the Constitution unless it protected the importation of slaves.

As stated before, it was Charles Pinckney, together with Wilson, who originally proposed the three-fifths compromise.  Yet once the formula was adopted, he later moved to include all slaves in representation, and for much the same reason as General Pinckney and Butler:

The blacks are the labourers, the peasants of the Southern States: they are as productive of pecuniary resources as those of the Northern States.  They add equally to the wealth, and considering money as the sinew of war, to the strength of the nation. 

Unlike the other South Carolina delegates, Charles Pinckney did not consider himself bound by a sectional compromise on commercial regulations.  Instead, he proposed to require a two-thirds majority on all commercial regulations, internal or external.  He feared oppressive regulations of a simple majority, saying the power of regulating commerce was a “pure concession” by the South, which did not need the protection of the northern states.  In this he was overruled.  At the end of the Convention Charles Pinckney urged the others to sign the Constitution despite their objections, saying he had objections of his own, including the authority of Congress to regulate trade by a simple majority.

And now, on to the most interesting and complex topic debated at the Constitutional Convention -- how democratic should the new government be, and by what definition?

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*No such provision was included. However, nearly a hundred years later, the Confederate Constitution would do just that, guarantying the citizens of the Confederacy the right to take their slaves to any state or territory without compromising their ownership.

North-South Issues and the Connecticut Delegation

The Connecticut delegates, for whatever reason, sided with the Deep South, particularly on the issue of slave importation.  When the subject was being debated, delegates from most of the states spoke up for prohibiting the importation of slaves, the South Carolina delegates had one set of allies, the delegates from Connecticut.  Indeed, it is difficult to draw the line between statesmanship (willingness to make tough compromises) and spinelessness, but the Connecticut delegation gives the impression of crossing that line altogether.

Roger Sherman:  Roger Sherman particularly crossed the line between statesmanship and spinelessness as on the issue of slave importation.  Although considered the slave trade "iniquitous," he said that he did not believe the public good required it to be prohibited, and it was better to let the Deep South import slaves than depart.  At the same time, “He acknowledged that if the power or prohibiting the importation should be given to the general government that it would be exercised.  He thought it would be its duty to exercise the power.”  This is an extraordinary argument; we must forbid the government from doing the right thing, or it would actually have to do it!  Like Madison, Sherman opposed allowing a tax on imported slaves as implying they were property and preferred mealy-mouthed euphemisms to actually using the word “slave.”

Sherman was equally spineless on slave representation.  He defended the three-fifths compromise by saying that representation was based on taxation and that slaves were included in the estimate of taxation and only incidentally in representation – this although he had been present when Morris and Wilson proposed that ploy as nothing but clever window dressing.  He did rather tepidly protest the requirement to return runaway slaves, saying he saw no more propriety in the public seizing and surrendering a slave or a servant than a horse, but neither Sherman nor anyone else was prepared to treat fugitive slaves as a major issue. 

He also took the southern viewpoint in opposing a federal tax on exports, saying that since different states had different exports, a federal export tax was apt to be discriminatory.  The authority to tax exports should be left to states, and the federal government could use its authority to regulate interstate commerce to prevent states with major ports from oppressing their neighbors.  On the other hand, he seemed to like prohibiting anyone, federal or state, from taxing exports.  Sherman did take the northern viewpoint on the most important issue to New England; commercial regulation, arguing that there were enough different interests to prevent the majority from abusing its power, and that requiring a two-thirds vote would obstruct laws too much.

            Oliver Ellsworth:  Unlike Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth’s defense of slave trade was no so much spineless as frankly amoral.  “The morality or wisdom of slavery are considerations belonging to the states themselves.  What enriches a part enriches the whole, and the States are the best judges of their particular interest.”  He defended the importation of slaves on states rights grounds, “let every state import what it pleases.”   Yet giving Congress authority to regulate foreign trade necessarily meant not allowing each state to import what it pleased.  Why may an exception to the one import that was morally indefensible?  To George Mason’s argument that slavery was corrupting, Ellsworth replied,  "As he had never owned a slave could not judge the effects of slavery on character:  He said however that if it was to be considered we ought to go farther and free those already in the Country."  This is not an abolitionist argument; quite the contrary, Ellsworth is warning Mason that it is unwise for a Virginia planter to take too strong a moral stand against slavery, or he will end up condemning himself.  He then went on to point out that Virginians’ opposition to slavery is not entirely altruistic; their slaves were multiplying so fast it was cheaper to raise than import them, whereas in the rice swamps of the Deep South slave die off and imports are necessary.  Slavery will die out as more poor laborers immigrate; the process was already underway in New England.  “As to the danger of insurrections from foreign influence, that will become a motive to kind treatment of the slaves.”

Ellsworth apparently believed that representation should be by wealth, but supported three-fifths compromise “until some other rule shall more accurately ascertain the wealth of the several States.”   He opposed federal export taxes for much the same reasons as Sherman; because most exports were from the South (tobacco, rice, indigo), a federal export tax would be discriminatory and lead to conflict between the states.  An export tax would also discourage industry and production, as opposed to an import tax, which discouraged luxury and consumption.  And, like Sherman, Ellsworth believed that federal regulation of interstate commerce would prevent states with major ports from exploiting their neighbors or, alternately, that if port states taxed their neighbors too much, their neighbors would start exporting directly.  He was apparently even willing to concede the most important issue to the north, a two-thirds vote on commercial regulations, to avoid splitting the union.

William Samuel Johnson:  However, the most proslavery of the Connecticut delegates was William Samuel Johnson.  Johnson only addressed one north-south issue; the issue of slave representation:  

Dr. Johnson, thought that wealth and population were the true equitable rule of representation; but he conceived that these two principles resolved themselves into one; population being the best measure of wealth. He concluded therefore that ye number of people ought to be established as the rule, and that all descriptions including blacks [i.e., slaves] equally with the whites, ought to fall within the computation.

When the vote on including all slaves in representation was taken, only South Carolina and Georgia voted for it; the other Southern states, even Virginia where slaves were 40% of the population, thought including all slaves in representation was going to far. Outside those two states, only William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut and two unnamed Pennsylvanians supported counting all slaves in representation.

Other Compromisers

James Wilson (Pennsylvania):  It was James Wilson, together with Charles Pinckney who originally proposed the three-fifths compromise.  He also made the ingenious proposal that instead of saying that taxation shall be proportional to representation, representation shall be proportional to taxation in order to give the illusion that slaves were a object of taxation and only indirectly of representation.  But his comments at other times indicate that he did not like his own proposal.  “Are they [slaves] admitted as Citizens?  then why are the not admitted on an equality with White Citizens? are the admitted as property?  then why is not other property admitted into the computation?” When the final draft of the Constitution said “representation and direct taxation” would be on the three-fifths basis, he moved to strike out “direct taxes,” although he knew very well why they were linked.  Yet he stood by the three-fifths compromise and accepted it as necessary.   Wilson did not firmly commit himself on the issue of slave representation.  However, when Deep South delegates said both that South Carolina and Georgia would refuse to confederate is slave trade was not protected and that they would soon end slave trade on their own, Wilson pointed out the contradiction.  He was also one of two delegates who rather tepidly protested the fugitive slave clause, saying that he did not like to oblige the state executive to return slaves at public expense.

On commercial issues, Wilson was thoroughly northern.  He favored a federal authority to tax exports and apparently believed that to deny it to the federal government would automatically give the states that authority, and port states would use it to exploit their neighbors.  He opposed requiring a two-thirds vote to pass a navigation act, saying it was better to have the minority “bound hand and foot” (Mason’s words) by the majority than the majority to be bound by the minority.  If every interest was to be protected, they would have to require unanimity in passing laws.  

Nathaniel Gorham (Massachusetts):  Nathaniel Gorham was thoroughly open to a compromise on slavery.  He supported the three-fifths compromise, saying that while New Englanders might resist counting slave in representation, when the issue was taxation, they wanted all slaves counted.  He supported the compromise between New England and the Deep South, seconding a motion to extend the protection of slave trade from 1800 to 1808 and approving of taxing imported slaves.  He was uncompromising on the issue of commercial regulations, however, even willing to hazard the Union over commercial regulations, saying, “[T]he Eastern States had no motive to Union but a commercial one.  They were able to protect themselves.  They were not afraid of external danger, and did not need the aid of the Southn States.” It was the South that faced the greatest danger in case of disunion, something he was clearly willing to consider. 

Hugh Williamson (North Carolina):  Hugh Williamson was an overall moderate.  He favored the three-fifths compromise in both taxation and representation, pointing out when the issue was representation, the North opposed counting slaves at all, but when the issue had been taxation, they took the opposite position.  He considered the three-fifths compromise reasonable.  The importation of slaves, he said, was permitted in North Carolina, but discouraged by a tax on all slaves imported.  He considered it better to protect slave trade than to see South Carolina and Georgia leave the Union.  He was unwilling to agree to any federal export tax, preferring even to pay Virginia’s taxes on exported tobacco, although when the motion was made to prohibit export taxes to either federal or state governments, he seconded it.   He also supported requiring a two-thirds vote on commercial regulations, saying that if northern states pushed commercial regulations too far, the south would build its own ships, but that southerners felt strongly about the subject.  Neither did he believe the South needed northern protection, their disease-ridden climate was protection enough.

Edmund Randolph (Virginia):  Edmund Randolph supported the three-fifths compromise, saying that he lamented that such a species of property existed, but since it did exist, owners would require security.  He was not as was not as resolute in opposing slave importation as George Mason, saying that he would rather risk the Constitution than give absolute protection to slave importation (i.e., Congress could never stop importation), but neither did he want to risk losing South Carolina and Georgia; he was willing to seek a compromise.  His most strongly southern position was on navigation acts.  Already wavering on whether to support the Constitution, he said that allowing a navigation act by a simple majority would complete the “deformity” of the system and, indeed, when he refused to sign the Constitution, he listed the lack of a restrain on navigation acts as one of his reasons for refusing to sign.  (Unlike George Mason, he did not list the protection of slave trade as a reason for refusing to sign).

All of this should make a certain pattern clear.  To the Northern states, ensuring that the South could not veto a navigation act was the single most important sectional issue.  They were quite willing to yield on slavery and on export taxes, issues that merely affected their moral sense, if they could have their way on navigation acts, an issue that affected their interests.