Slavery in the US

Slavery in the US

The question of prohibiting the African slave-trade by a provision in the national Constitution caused much and warm debate in the convention that framed that instrument. A compromise was agreed to by the insertion of a clause (art. I., sec. 9, clause 1) in the Constitution, as follows: "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight; but a tax, or duty, may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.

The idea of prohibiting the African slave-trade, then warmly advocated, was not new. In 1774 the Continental Congress, while releasing the colonies from other provisions of the AMERICAN ASSOCIATION , had expressly resolved " that no slave be imported into any of the United States." Delaware, by her constitution, and Virginia and Maryland by special laws, had prohibited the importation of slaves.

Similar prohibitions were in force in all the more northern States; but they did not prevent the merchants of those States from carrying on the slave-trade elsewhere, and already some New England ships were engaged in a traffic from the African coast to Georgia and South Carolina.

These States were forgetful of or indifferent to the pledges they had made through their delegates in the face of the world by their concurrence in the Declaration of Independence, and seemed fully determined to maintain not only the slave system of labor, but the nefarious slave-trade. North Carolina did not prohibit the traffic, but denounced the further importation of slaves into the State as " highly impolitic," and imposed a heavy duty on future importations.

On the demand of Henry Laurens, of South Carolina, who entered into the negotiations for a preliminary treaty of peace, at a late hour, a clause in the treaty (1782) was interlined, prohibiting, in the British evacuation, the " carrying away any negroes or other property of the inhabitants." So this treaty of peace, in which no word had, excepting indirectly, indicated the existence of slavery in the United States, made known to the world that men could be held as property.
The legislature of Connecticut, early in 1784, passed an act that no negro or mulatto child born within that State after March 1 that year should be held in servitude longer than until the age of twenty-five years.