Let's make sure “who” the founders were that you were attributing the effort to minimize slavery, and to whose benefit the continuation of slavery actually was.
Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, was one of the most earnest advocates of the Southern sentiment against slavery. In 1777, being then a member of the Virginia Legislature, he brought in a bill which became a law, “to prevent the importation of slaves.”
He also proposed a system of general emancipation, as a preliminary to which he introduced a bill to authorize manumission; this became a law.
In these efforts he had the support and sympathy of the slave-holding States, who were overrun with slaves. At that time, slaves generally returned no adequate remuneration.
At this period their numbers reached some 600,000, a part of whom were employed in raising tobacco and rice. The majority of them, however, were occupied in domestic farm-labor, producing no exportable values. Hence there was no profit in slavery but only a burden in the South.
Southern support of manumission was meant as a check to the trading in Negro slaves, carried on by Massachusetts with unabated activity. This legislative effort did not pass at the time, but in 1787, it was renewed by Nathan Dane, in the Federal Convention. The clause enjoining the restitution of fugitive slaves was then added and it passed unanimously.
By a unanimous vote, it became a vital part of the Federal Constitution, and without it, this compact could never have gone into effect.
And why? The slave trade carried on by the North became also the theme of much sharp discussion in the Convention. The North was not disposed, of course, to give it up, but with the South it had become an intolerable grievance.
You said: The founders knew that the Constitution would not be ratified if they banned slavery, but they put the mechanisms in place to limit the slaveholders power as much as possible at that time.
That should read slave traders instead of slave holders.
Many slaveholders as well as Southern government officials had long and ardently protested against the slave trade when carried on by England, but their intentions were now to break with the North rather than submit further to this traffic. In return the North demanded compensation for the loss of this very thriving trade, and the South readily conceded it by granting them the monopoly of the coasting and carrying trade against all foreign tonnage. In this way it was settled that the Slave Trade should be abolished after 1808.
Without this important clause, the South would never have consented to enter into a Constitutional agreement with the North. The Federal Constitution, with these essential clauses, having passed into operation, it became, henceforth, a certainty that the Slave Trade would finally expire in the United States at the close of 1808.
This left it still a duration of nineteen years, and the North seemed determined to reap the utmost possible advantage from the time remaining.
10/5/1778 Virginia outlawed the importation of slaves into the Commonwealth. The act specifically stated that any slave brought into the state would be immediately free. This action by Virginia was the first effort in the civilized world to prohibit the slave trade. This was not the first time Virginia had attempted to stop slave trading. This law was passed after Virginia declared itself independent of Great Britain.
The Virginia House of Burgesses had many times before attempted to stop the slave trade, only to have these laws overruled by the Royal Governor. The Royal Governor was appointed by the British monarch, and was acting on behalf of the King and British Parliament.
Just before he wrote the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, stated that one of the reasons Virginia was compelled to leave British control was that the British had forced them to endure the slave trade. He stated that the King had refused to allow the colony to exclude by law the slave trade. James Madison, also of Virginia, said, “The British Government constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to this infernal traffic.”
1783 Massachusetts and New Hampshire banned slavery. John Adams stated that the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts was due to the protest of competing white laborers rather than for ethical or moral reasons.
According to John Adams, it was not a tender conscience but an economic reason upon which the forbidding of slaves in Massachusetts was based.
He is quoted as saying,
“Argument might have had some weight in the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, but the real cause was the multiplication of laboring white people who no longer would suffer the rich to employ these sable rivals so much to their injury.”
See references:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XnsjAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA296&lpg=PA296&dq=%22break+with+the+North+rather+than+submit+further+to+this+traffic%22&source=bl&ots=UEvlonCjpk&sig=FMVUDErS7YlwS8XyOXJCFhB848k&hl=en&ei=aSNxTIeZHYL68AaS9MydDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22break%20with%20the%20North%20rather%20than%20submit%20further%20to%20this%20traffic%22&f=false.
http://books.google.com/books?id=9Q6UMtzX_6oC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=%22the+South+readily+conceded+it+by+granting+them+the+monopoly+of+the+coasting+and+carrying+trade+against+all+foreign+tonnage%22&source=bl&ots=rV5RU9bmbn&sig=THc2oeK0ES7tmNsJA7LB0ImdaXA&hl=en&ei=dCJxTOHCMYO88gbuus3uDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20South%20readily%20conceded%20it%20by%20granting%20them%20the%20monopoly%20of%20the%20coasting%20and%20carrying%20trade%20against%20all%20foreign%20tonnage%22&f=false
And finally:
Before their separation from England, many of the colonies wanted a cessation of the slave trade due to the fact that there was no adequate employment at that time for the Negro population. The British Crown refused.
When the separation took place, from that moment the New England States assumed the position, in regard to slavery, which Great Britain had previously occupied.
The evil of this traffic had become apparent to the people of the South, and when the Constitution was being framed in 1787, the South demanded that the fundamental law of the land should inhibit this traffic of importing human beings from Africa.
The New England slave-traders resisted the South. The New England States owned the shipping and distilleries, and were profiting greatly from the slave trade. They accumulated much capital in both.
Thomas Jefferson had developed an anti-slavery clause in the first draft of the Declaration. The clause was removed by John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (MA), Robert R. Livingston (NY), and Roger Sherman (CT).
As a compromise, it was agreed that the trade should be restricted, and after the year 1800, entirely prohibited.
Thomas Jefferson, who had introduced a scathing denunciation of, and protest against, the slave trade in the Declaration of Independence, withdrew it upon the insistence of Adams and other New Englanders, and he indulged in the following little bit of sarcasm at their expense:
"Our Northern friends... were tender under these censures, for, though their people have very few slaves, yet they had been considerable carriers of them to others."
By the persistency of New England, the provision was finally extended to the year 1808.
Therefore, it was as a concession to New England interests that the trade was continued to 1808.
You can cite historical quotes, passages and laws all you want, but the truth does not enter the heads of those indoctrinated in our public school system.
North good, south bad, that’s all they “know.”
When I mentioned limiting the slaveholders power I was mainly referring to the part about counting the 3/5ths of a slave for apportionment representation purposes. This had nothing to do with the actual slave trade and it’s ban. While your response is enlightening as there are many things in it I did not know it is not on point.
If the counter point that you are trying to make is that the “blood” of slavery was on multiple people’s hands at the time of the founding (both North and South), I would agree with you. However, during the time of the Civil War it is fair to say that the majority of the movement for abolition was in the Northern states and it is the Christians who were leading the way. I personally believe that the fight to end abortions is very much akin to the abolitionist movement pre-Civil War.
You mention Thomas Jefferson. A man I admire greatly. While he did do a lot of things to try to end slavery (as I mentioned the founders previously, I was thinking of people like Adams and Jefferson in this regard), yet he owned slaves himself. He could not free them during his own lifetime because he was constrained by the bounds of his society. In the debate over slavery, not all southerners were evil and not all northerners were angels. But today, it seems to me that the only people who defend the South’s position vis a vis the Civil War and by extension slavery are southerners...