The provision you hang your hat on was an unjust inclusion in the original Constitution. It should never have been there in the first place, because it violated the laws of nature and nature’s God and the first stated natural law principles of the republic. It treated men like cattle, instead of like the men they were, made in the image and likeness of God, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, starting with the rights to life and liberty.
But it was demanded by the slaveholders, with the threat of the dissolution of the national Union that had been forged in the fires of the Revolution.
Sadly, the founders, so wise in most things, succumbed to the temptations of political expedience and compromise.
But the later opposition of good men to the injustice of the practice of slavery, especially the injustice that forced them and their states to offer physical support to the injustice, made conflict inevitable.
The abolitionists had a moral basis for their opposition to the unjust constitutional provision.
The slaveholders had no moral basis for their claim to property in human souls, even if countenanced by the Constitution.
Natural right precedes and supersedes all human laws and constitutions, you see.
And a breach of natural right, of the laws of nature and nature’s God, will always catch up with you, or a nation, sooner or later.
That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, whether you like it or not.
“The abolitionists had a moral basis for their opposition to the unjust constitutional provision.”
I didn’t think I would ever dislodge you from your contention that the north was on the side of the constitution - but I have. You rest your case on moral, not constitutional, grounds.
I don’t know how you make a strong moral argument against human bondage based on Mosaic Law, or the Koran. You have a better argument within Christian teaching, especially if you can discredit Saint Paul and find a passage where Jesus speaks out against it (human bondage).
Your case will be even stronger once Christianity is adopted as the official religion of the United States.
You didn’t ask me, but my understanding is this:
If you, or your grandfather, owned slaves and you do not accept Jesus as your personal savior, you WILL go to hell.
If you, or your grandfather, did not own slaves and you do not accept Jesus as your personal savior, you WILL go to hell.
Is that your understanding too?
Not exactly accurate.
The following is an extract from the sermon of Rev. Dr. N. Adams, of the Essex Street Church, Boston, delivered on Fast Day, January 4, 1861:
“We at the North are certainly responsible before God for the existence of slavery in our land. The Committee of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, consisted of Messrs. Rutledge, of South Carolina, Randolph, of Virginia, and three from the Free States, viz: Messrs. Wilson, of Pennsylvania, Gorham, of Massachusetts, and Ellsworth, of Connecticut.
“They reported, as a section for the Constitution, that no tax or other duty should be laid on the migration or importation of such persons as the several States should think proper to admit; not that such migration or importation should be prohibited. This was referred by the Convention to a committee, a majority of whom being from the Slave States, they reported that the Slave Trade be abolished after 1800, and that a tax be levied on imported slaves.
But in the Convention, the Free States of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, voted to extend the trade eight years, and it was accordingly done; by means of which it is estimated there are now at least three hundred thousand more slaves in the country than there would otherwise have been.”
“A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.”
-—Thomas Jefferson
I think that misstates the issue in 1787.
By 1787 only two Northern states had totally abolished slavery, and five more began very gradual abolition processes.
But in New York and New Jersey, slavery was still totally legal.
Point is: even by 1787 there was not yet universal agreement in the North that slavery should be abolished, and so there was no great confrontation at the Constitution Convention over that particular question.
Yes, around the margins there was much debate, especially over questions of how, logically, "property" could be counted as "people", and ending with the notorious 3/5 rule.
Today that 3/5 rule sounds, well, absurd, but practically speaking it gave Southern states something they desperately needed: substantially more representation than their voting white populations otherwise justified.
Hence the term: "the Slave Power".
Indeed, since Thomas Jefferson was the first President elected by "the Slave Power", he was given the moniker: the Black President.