August 25, 1787: The Slavery Compromise

Part of the National Park Service's day-by-day account of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, August 16 to 31, 1787.

James Madison, by Chester Harding, 1829. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

"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

In the Convention: Saturday, August 25, 1787

The war debt

The delegates returned to the clause making the new government pay the old one's debts. The hard part: many Revolutionary soldiers had been paid in government IOUs, worth little at the time, and many hard-up veterans had sold them to sharp-eyed investors for a fraction of their face value.

• Mason (Virginia) objected to paying full value to those who had "purchased fraudulently of the ignorant and distressed", as distinct from people who bought on the open market. He admitted the line was hard to draw but wanted the government to try.
• Gerry (Massachusetts) claimed no personal interest, owning barely enough securities to pay his taxes — in fact he held at least $50,000 worth, more than any other delegate. He would help the defrauded if possible, but defended the "stock-jobbers": they kept the paper's value up, and without them there would be no market.

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

The slave trade

The delegates took up the Committee of Eleven's compromise on the slave trade and foreign commerce, which let Congress ban the trade in 1800.

• Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (South Carolina), seconded by Gorham (Massachusetts), moved to push the date to 1808. Over Madison's objection it passed 7–4, with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia against.
• Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania) proposed saying "importation of slaves" instead of "such persons", and naming Georgia and the Carolinas as the importing states, so it would be known that this part of the Constitution was a concession to them — though he would drop it if they objected. Mason did not mind the word "slave" but feared naming states would offend. Sherman (Connecticut) and Clymer (Pennsylvania) did not want the word at all, since it was "not pleasing to some people". Williamson (North Carolina) said he opposed slavery in opinion and practice, but thought it better for humanity that South Carolina and Georgia stay in the Union as slave-trading states than be shut out. Morris withdrew.
• Taxing imports of enslaved people. Sherman opposed it, since taxing them as imports meant "acknowledging men to be property"; Madison agreed. King (Massachusetts), Langdon (New Hampshire) and C. C. Pinckney called the tax part of the necessary compromise. Mason and Gorham urged Sherman to weigh the tax's use in discouraging the trade over what it implied; Sherman answered that so small a duty showed its aim was revenue, not discouragement. Morris noted that the vague "such persons" might even let Congress tax states admitting free immigrants. The clause passed unanimously.

The president

• Unanimously and without debate, the Convention gave the president the power to "receive ambassadors and other public Ministers" — in effect, charge of foreign policy.
• Sherman moved to require the Senate's consent for pardons. It failed 1–8, only Connecticut in favour. The Convention then unanimously made the pardon power not apply to impeachments.

In short

• How to repay the government's creditors was left to Congress.
• A compromise on foreign trade: Congress could not ban the slave trade before 1808, but could tax enslaved Africans brought in as property.
• The president gained authority over foreign policy and a broad pardon power.

The delegates' day

• Johnson (Connecticut) and Gerry dined together.
• Livingston (New Jersey) wrote to his old friend John Tabor Kempe, a Loyalist now in London, sending evidence for Kempe's claims against the Crown for property the Americans had seized.

Philadelphia today

• The Pennsylvania Herald later reported that the decorations of Christ Church's steeple were completed that day without accident — ten years to the day after lightning, on August 25, 1777, almost destroyed the crown at the top of the spire. A bishop's mitre, honouring the ordination of Bishop William White earlier that year, now replaced it.

Sources

• National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park, "August 25, 1787: The Slavery Compromise," from The Constitutional Convention: A Day by Day Account for August 16 to 31, 1787. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-august25.htm
• Quotations are from the Convention's records of 1787; the rest is rewritten in hubnx's own words.