The US Constitution tolerated slavery because at the time of its ratification slavery was an on-going institution internal to certain states. The infamous 3/5ths clause does not use the word slave, slavery or slaves, and equally applied to Indians as well as other non-citizen residents.
Read the Confederate Constitution! It directly defends slavery and called it out by name (slave, slaves, slavery) 10 times. It was so proactive in its defense of its “peculiar institution” that no new territory could join it as a state unless it accepted slavery as internal institution. In contrast with the US Constitution which allowed the choice! Allowing choice is not very “pro”!
To call the US Constitution pro-slavery is simply disingenuous! It simply tolerated it. By not citing it specifically. By using non-specific text in the “3/5s passage” the US Constitution allowed at some future date for it to be “reformed away” without doing too much violence to the text. An editor with a pen could easily remove the “3/5ths passage”. If you look at the Confederate Constitution it is interwoven in the text in such a manner that editing it out with such a pen would shred the document.
Ther are some very good things in the CSA Constitution such as a one 6-year term for the President, strong statements on state sovereignty, etc. But to equate it to the US Constitution on the issue of slavery is to deliberate misread it!
“No person held in service...shall...be discharged...but shall be delivered up...”
I have no idea how many people were “delivered up” via governmental power. I suspect most escaped persons were simply snatched up by bounty hunters and transported back to the plantation.
Meaning all but Massachusetts, I think. I think in 1787, all the rest were slave states, which is a very different thing than you imply in your statement.
To call the US Constitution pro-slavery is simply disingenuous! It simply tolerated it.
I would say Article IV, Section 2 goes way beyond "tolerating" it. It requires action of the state to enforce it. It compels *ALL* states to engage in slavery enforcement.
Yes, the US constitution tiptoes around the word "slavery", but those "held to labor by the laws of any state", means "slave." They were squeamish about using the word, but you can read between the lines and understand the US Constitution is referring to slaves and slavery.
An editor with a pen rewriting the U.S. Constitution? Well that has just happened in Maine where a non-elected, non-lawyer appointee added some language to the U.S. Constitution giving herself the authority to revoke Donald Trump's right to run for president.
It is great to live in a country where a man is free to say what he thinks - without thinking.
The 3/5 compromise came from a 1783 taxation amendment during the Articles of Confederation era. The amendment didn’t pass but the issue carried over into the Constitutional Convention.
The issue of which side wanted slaves counted as full persons is counterintuitive to what people today imagine it was.
Counting slaves as full persons in 1783 would have lowered the tax obligation of slave states.
Counting slaves as full persons in 1789 would have increased the number of Congressional representatives from slave states.
In both cases slave states wanted slaves counted as persons and non-slave states didn’t want slaves counted at all. The 3/5 compromise was the result.
It is frequently stated that “the Constitution never uses the word slavery” as if the Constitution does not mention slavery; or does not protect slavery.
It is there. In his first inaugural address Lincoln said:
“There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the
party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to any other…”
Yes, Lincoln found slavery in the U.S. Constitution.
I denounce slavery in the strongest possible terms.