August 29, 1787: A Bargain with Slavery

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

Snake and Butterfly, by Johann Teyler after Otto Marseus van Schrieck, 1697. National Gallery of Art.

"States pursue their interests with less scruple than individuals."
— Charles Pinckney

In the Convention: Wednesday, August 29, 1787

Full faith and credit. Williamson (North Carolina) did not understand the clause and proposed the Articles of Confederation's wording instead; Charles Pinckney (South Carolina), backed by Madison, proposed uniform bankruptcy laws; Randolph (Virginia) proposed that states accept each other's acts. All went to a committee.

Majority rule on trade

The Committee of Detail had recommended that laws regulating trade not need a two-thirds vote. Charles Pinckney moved to postpone, seconded by Luther Martin (Maryland). He named five very different economic interests: New England's fisheries and West Indies trade; New York's free trade; the wheat and flour of New Jersey and Pennsylvania; the tobacco of Maryland, Virginia and part of North Carolina; and the rice and indigo of South Carolina and Georgia. Without a check on a bare majority, he warned, they would produce oppressive regulations; giving Congress power over commerce was a pure concession by the South.

His cousin Charles Cotesworth Pinckney agreed that the South's true interest was no regulation of commerce — but valued union with the powerful North, and praised the North's "liberal conduct" towards the South. Madison, in a footnote, explained that this meant permission to import slaves: a deal on the slave trade and commerce had been made outside the Convention, which accounted for the day's votes and for the language of General Pinckney and others. Reassured, C. C. Pinckney would let Congress regulate trade.

• Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania) opposed postponing. Clymer (Pennsylvania) said the North and Middle states would be ruined if they could not retaliate against foreign regulations. Sherman (Connecticut) argued that the very variety of interests guarded against abuse; Pinckney answered that it was nothing beside the gulf between North and South.
• Butler (South Carolina) said the regions' interests were "as different as the interests of Russia and Turkey". Yet southerners split: Charles Pinckney, Williamson and Mason (Virginia) still wanted two-thirds, while C. C. Pinckney, Spaight (North Carolina), Butler, Madison and Rutledge backed a simple majority, wishing, in Butler's words, to conciliate the North.

That split fits Madison's footnote. The bargain: the North got trade regulation by majority vote, which the South had opposed; the South got a Constitution that barred Congress from banning the slave trade until 1808. Pinckney's motion failed 4–7 (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia for), and majority rule on trade passed unanimously.

The fugitive slave clause

Butler then moved to add that a person "bound to service or labor" who escaped into another state would not be freed by that state's laws, but "shall be delivered up to the person justly claiming their service or labor." In plain terms, an enslaved person who fled to a free state stayed enslaved under U.S. law and was to be returned. It passed unanimously, without debate.

New states

• Morris moved to let Congress admit new states without full equality with the original thirteen; he had often warned that western states would have different interests and should not get too much power. Langdon (New Hampshire) and Williamson backed him; Madison, Sherman and Mason did not. It passed 9–2, Virginia and Maryland against.
• Morris also moved that no state could be divided without its consent. Martin objected: Vermont, "Frankland" (today's Tennessee) and Virginia's western county (today's Kentucky) all wanted independence from New York, North Carolina and Virginia, and it was wrong to deny them self-government. It passed 6–5, all the "noes" small states — New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. Langdon and Dickinson (Delaware) sided with Martin, Johnson (Connecticut) was torn, and Morris, Butler and Wilson resented small states wanting to break up large ones against their will.

In short

• Madison's notes show a private deal: several southern delegates dropped their opposition to trade regulation by majority vote in exchange for the slave trade continuing until at least 1808.
• Perhaps as part of it, a fugitive slave clause denied freedom to enslaved people who fled to free states.
• Morris's motion letting Congress admit new states on unequal terms passed, and his motion that states could be divided only with their consent passed narrowly.

The delegates' day

• Johnson dined again at Wilson's.
• Washington (Virginia) again dined and spent the evening with Mary and Robert Morris.
• Franklin chaired a meeting of Pennsylvania's Supreme Executive Council.
• Gerry wrote to his wife for the fourth time that week, distressed that she was fainting so often: if she did not improve soon he would "quit the convention; & let their proceedings take their chance." He had been a mere spectator for some time, he said, differing so much from his colleagues, and longed to see "my dear Nancy".

Philadelphia today

• Morning rain, a cloudy afternoon, then clear.
• The Pennsylvania Gazette ran an advertisement, over a third of a page, for the seventh edition of Noah Webster's American Spelling Book, from Young & McCullough at Second and Chestnut, with endorsements from Connecticut's lieutenant governor Oliver Wolcott, Yale's president Ezra Stiles, Congressman Stephen M. Mitchell, the artist John Trumbull, the poet Joel Barlow (brother-in-law of Baldwin of Georgia) and many others.

Sources

• National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park, "August 29, 1787: A Bargain with Slavery," from The Constitutional Convention: A Day by Day Account for August 16 to 31, 1787. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-august29.htm
• Quotations are from the Convention's records and letters of 1787; the rest is rewritten in hubnx's own words.