Was the Constitution a Pro-Slave Document?

In class, we discussed whether or not we felt that the Constitution was a pro-slave document, and after learning about the changes that occurred after the 18^th century, I find it plausible that the Constitution was on balance a pro-slave document. “Of its eighty-four clauses, six are directly concerned with slaves and their owners” (Slavery’s Constitution, 1). To start, the document discusses slavery in three sections; the fugitive slave clause, the three-fifths compromise, and the ending of the slave trade. If the Constitution was in any way an attempt to eliminate slavery, then I do not think that these provisions would have been established. The fugitive slave clause states that if a slave steals himself away from his master, in other words, runs away, then that slave can be returned to his owner. I think that this clause enhanced the laws of slavery because it allowed for a slave who runs away to be taken back to his owner, where he was sure to suffer terrible consequences. No matter where he ran to, the fugitive slave clause legally ensured his return to slavery.

The three-fifths compromise defined that the population of slaves would be counted as three-fifths of the total population. “Three-fifths of the number of slaves in any state would count toward a state’s number of congressmen, and three-fifths of them would count toward how much in taxes a state would have to pay when the Congress passed a direct tax” (Slavery’s Constitution, 4). This clause had three effects. First, it effectively defined a black man as three-fifths of a person, which meant that he would forever be in the underclass. One man, one vote only applied to whites. Second, it was a way for Southern States to gain more power in the House of Representatives because including slaves in the census meant that they would get an increase in their allotment of representatives. Third, by increasing the representation of Southern states in the House of Representatives, slave laws would be harder to defeat.

The last clause that directly discusses slavery is the slave trade provision. The Constitution was written in 1787, but in it the Congress was not allowed to end the slave trade before 1808, more than 20 years later. I am twenty years old now, and it seems to me as if they wrote in an unreasonable delay before a slave trade ban was to be implemented. It also seems as if the Colonists wanted to maximize the number of Africans they could bring over before the trade ended, thus extending the slave trade for at least 20 years after the Constitution was created. Furthermore, did the creators of the Constitution mean to end the slave trade, or slavery itself? I believe they left the issue purposely ambiguous with their language.

I do not think that the authors of the Constitution did a very good job at attempting to reduce or eliminate slavery, if in fact that was ever one of their goals. A question that needs to be asked is, if the authors did the best that they could when creating the Constitution to ensure that the Colonies would stay intact, and I do think that they did. My only question is why they left such leniency to an institution that was the antithesis of their very goals? Couldn’t they have found a way to pressure, persuade or bribe the Southern states into accepting a timeline for the ending of slavery? I think that the language of the Constitution implicitly favored this institution, perhaps because the profitability of the slave trade outweighed the immorality of it. I realize that abolishing slavery might have been unrealistic in 1780, but I think that laws enforcing better treatment of Africans could have been initiated, and the Constitution could have provided for that in its language. Overall, I think that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document.