August 25, 1787: The Slavery Compromise

James Madison by Chester Harding, 1829

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.68.50?destination=node/63231%3Fedan_q%3Djames%2520madison

"Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term will be more dishonorable to the American character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution."

--James Madison

Saturday, August 25, 1787: The Convention Today

The clause requiring the new government to pay the former government’s debt was reconsidered. The most difficult factor was that many soldiers during the Revolutionary War had been paid in government debt—effectively IOUs. These paper promises had little real value at the time, and many cash-strapped veterans had sold them to greedy, sharp-eyed investors for a pittance on their face value.

Mason (VA) objected to “those who purchased fraudulently of the ignorant and distressed” getting the face value of these IOUs, although he tried to make a distinction with “those who have bought stock in the open market.” He admitted “the difficulty of drawing the line” between worthy and unworthy creditors but he wanted the government to try.

Gerry (MA) claimed to have “no interest in the question, being not possessed of more of the securities than would, by the interest, pay his taxes.” (In actuality, he owned at least $50,000 worth, more than any other delegate.) He wasn’t opposed to helping “those who have been defrauded,” if possible, but he also didn’t think it right to denigrate “stock-jobbers”: “They keep up the value of the paper. Without them there would be no market.”

In the end, when and how to pay the war debt was left to Congress.

The delegates now considered the report of the Committee of Eleven, which had created a compromise over the issues of the slave trade and international commerce.

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (SC), seconded by Gorham (MA), moved to alter the compromise, which let Congress ban the slave trade in 1800. He wanted to change the year to 1808.

Over Madison’s (VA) objection, the motion passed 7–4, with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia opposed.

Gouverneur Morris (PA) proposed two emendations to the clause: changing the wording from “importation of such persons” to “importation of slaves” and explicitly naming Georgia and North and South Carolina as the states doing the importing. “He wished it to be known... that this part of the Constitution was a compliance with those States,” but he was willing to drop the wording if the delegates from those states objected.

Mason didn’t mind using the term “slave” but worried that naming the specific states would cause offense.

Sherman (CT) and Clymer (PA) did not want to use the word “slave” since it was “not pleasing to some people.”

Williamson (NC) said “that both in opinion and practice he was against slavery; but thought it more in favor of humanity, from a view of all circumstances” for South Carolina and Georgia to remain part of the United States as slave trading states than for them to be excluded for that reason.

G. Morris withdrew his motion to amend the slave trade clause to make it more explicit.

There was now a debate over taxing the importation of enslaved Africans. Sherman was opposed, because taxing slaves as imports amounted to “acknowledging men to be property.” Madison agreed. King (MA), Langdon (NH), and C. C. Pinckney all said that the tax was part of the necessary compromise on the slave trade. Mason and Gorham encouraged Sherman to think more about the importance of using taxes to discourage the slave trade and to think less about the dehumanization that such a tax perhaps implied. Sherman responded “that the smallness of the duty showed revenue to be the object, not the discouragement of the importation.”

G. Morris noted that the vague wording of “importation of such persons” suggested that the US Congress could tax states admitting non-enslaved immigrants. Regardless, the clause permitting taxation on the “importation of such persons” passed with unanimous support from the state delegations.

The day concluded with work on the section defining the President’s powers. Unanimously, without debate, the Convention gave the President the power to “receive ambassadors and other public Ministers,” which effectively puts the President in charge of foreign policy.

Sherman moved to limit the President’s pardon power by requiring the Senate’s consent. His motion wasn’t debated and failed 1–8, with Connecticut in support.

The Convention then unanimously amended the pardon power clause so it was inapplicable to impeachments.

Synopsis

• The Convention deferred to the future United States Congress the specifics of how the federal government would repay its creditors.
• The Convention passed a compromise on the issue of foreign trade—the importation of enslaved Africans being the most fraught part of the issue. Congress would be unable to ban the slave trade prior to the year 1808, although it could tax enslaved Africans as property.
• The President of the United States was given authority over foreign policy and granted an extensive pardon power.

Delegates Today

• Johnson (CT) and Gerry (MA) dined together.
• Livingston (NJ) wrote from Philadelphia to his old friend John Tabor Kempe, a Tory now living in London. Livingston was providing him evidence to support his claims against the Crown for property seized from him by the Americans.

Philadelphia Today

• The Pennsylvania Herald of September 1st reported today’s activity at Christ Church: “On Saturday last, the decorations of Christ Church steeple were completed and fixed on without any kind of accident.... It is remarkable... that on that day ten years [ago], viz, the 25th of August, 1777, the Crown, placed on the extreme end of the spire, was almost demolished by lightning. The representation of a Bishop’s Mitre [in honor of the ordination of Bishop William White earlier in the year], is now substituted in its stead, which is deemed a great addition to the other public ornaments of the city.”