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The US Constitution, 3/5, and the Slave Trade Clause: Crash Course Black American History #9 - YouTube
Channel: CrashCourse
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Hi! My name is Clint Smith and this is Crash
Course Black American History.
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So sometimes in life, who we say we want to
be is not necessarily who we are in that moment.
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For example, when I was a little kid, I wanted
to be a pro wrestler, and not like, grow up
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and become one eventually, I wanted to be
one right then, right there, in that moment.
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Now, the thing is, even if I wrote down on
a sheet of paper that I was a pro wrestler,
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even if I got all of my friends to meet in
a room and agree that I was a pro wrestler,
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even if I got all of those friends to sign
a long scroll of paper calling me a pro wrestler,
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none of that, in fact, makes me a professional
wrestler.
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See, thereâs a disconnect there, between
who I say I want to be, and who I actually
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am in that moment. This is basically the same
thing that happened with the US constitution.
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Stay with me. America said a lot of great
things about who it was and what it represented,
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even though, for millions of people, the aspirations
espoused in that document, didnât apply
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to them. And not only did it not apply to
them, but it further entrenched the racial
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caste system that was already in place.
You see, who America says it is, and who America
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has been, have not always been neatly aligned,
far from it.
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Itâs more than a little ironic that the
place where the U.S. Constitution was drafted
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was later called Independence Hall. Because
while itâs true that the United States was
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effectively born there, there were millions
of people who called the United States home,
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who, in many ways, became even less free following
the ratification of the Constitution.
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Now, this is not to imply that the colonial
laws weâve talked about in earlier episodes
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werenât restricting and inhumane in their
own right â they were. But the constitution,
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even in its earliest days when so many people
around the world werenât really sure what
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a constitution even was, was intended as an
effort to solidify the legal principles of
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a nation.
In the United States, the Constitution is
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the central legal document of our land. Itâs
the thing everything else comes back to. And
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in our foundational legal document, the one
upon which the legal and political landscape
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of this country would be built, the founders
failed to do away with slavery. In fact, they
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recommitted to it.
And there were many people who felt strongly
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that this was a moral indictment of the country.
Almost 70 years later, in 1854, the famous
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abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison would
hold up a copy of the Constitution and burn
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it, calling it âa covenant with death and
an agreement with Hell.â
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And it didnât have to be this way. The Founders
could have used this as an opportunity to
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say, âhey, look letâs start this experiment
fresh.â They could have said, âyou know
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what team, we inherited slavery from the British,
we just fought a war of independence, and
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that means we should probably make everyone
independent.â But instead the majority of
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them were like...ânahh.â
And the thing is, so many of them knew slavery
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was wrong, and so many of them knew it was
something they should be ashamed of. And thatâs
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why the word "slave" didnât actually appear
anywhere in the Constitution. They didnât
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want it anywhere on the document, because
they knew it would be something history would
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judge them for.
This matters because it demonstrates what
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many of the Founders of our nation valued
and where they thought Black people should
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be on the social hierarchy.
On an economic front, slavery was an incredibly
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lucrative business, and the Founders knew
that. Many of them personally. Of the 55 delegates
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to the Constitutional Convention, about 25
owned enslaved people.
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This conflict manifested itself in two ways
â the Three-Fifths Compromise and the Slave
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Trade Clause. Letâs start with the Three-Fifths
Compromise.
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Article one of the Constitution set up a government
with two legislative chambers. In the Senate,
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each state gets two senators. But in the House
of Representatives, representation is determined
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by the population of the state.
And the newly minted states had very different
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compositions. Northern states were more densely
populated with White citizens, while Southern
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states were heavily populated with enslaved
Black people.
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What this did was create a dilemma. The colonists
were unsure if and how they should acknowledge
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enslaved Black people as members of the population
and to what extent they should be counted
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as âcitizensâ in the context of allotting
states political representation. Letâs go
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to the Thought Bubble
Northern delegates did not support including
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enslaved Black people in the population of
the Southern states, largely because it would
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give the South more political power. But,
the Southern Delegates knew that they wouldnât
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be able to compete in the House of Representatives
if enslaved people werenât counted.
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And this is where we get something called,
the three-fifths compromise. The Three-Fifths
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Compromise was a clause in the Constitution
that defined enslaved individuals as 3/5 of
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a human. It was placed in Article 1, Section
2. and it stated that âRepresentatives and
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direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the
several States which may be included within
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this Union, according to their respective
Numbers, which shall be determined by adding
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to the whole Number of free Persons, including
those bound to Service for a Term of Years,
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and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths
of all other persons.â
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Three-Fifths of a person. That doesnât even
make sense to say out loud. And it sounds
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absurd, because it is absurd.
Even though the South would have loved for
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Black people to /fully count/ for political
purposes, this legislative compromise, which
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turned Black people into fractions, came to
serve as a larger metaphor for the way that
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Black people were seen by many as less than
human. The implications of this decision were
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profound. It changed the dynamics of the House
of Representatives and the Electoral College.
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Without the â
compromise, some historians
even argue that Thomas Jefferson wouldnât
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have won the election of 1800.
Thanks, Thought Bubble.
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The 3/5 compromise wasnât the only negotiation
about what slavery would look like in the
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new United States.
The Slave Trade Clause was outlined in Article
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1, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution.
Though it doesnât use the word âslaveâ
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it was one of the original provisions of the
Constitution that addressed slavery as a policy
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issue.
The text says, âThe Migration or Importation
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of such Persons as any of the States now existing
shall think proper to admit, shall not be
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prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year
one thousand eight hundred and eight, but
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a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation,
not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.â
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This is basically a really fancy way of saying
that the federal government cannot limit how
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many individuals were imported to the United
States. According to legal scholars Gordon
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Lloyd and Jenny S. Martinez, when they said
âany such Personsâ they clearly meant
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âenslaved people of African descent.â
They also point out that this clause was created
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to be another compromise between the Northern
and Southern colonies. It allowed for slavery
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to exist in the south, where it directly sustained
the economy, and allowed for slavery to remain
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illegal at the local level where it had already
been abolished.
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But it allowed for ALL of the colonies to
indirectly, economically benefit from slavery,
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and the fact that so many across the country,
North and South, benefited financially from
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slavery is part of what allowed it to sustain
itself for so long.
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Some states, like Georgia and South Carolina
had a unique reliance on the transatlantic
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slave trade because their enslaved workers
died at higher rates relative to places like
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Virgina or Maryland. They were particularly
insistent on this point, so much that some
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feared they wouldnât join the Union if there
were Constitutional limits placed on the slave
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trade.
So even though this document was written without
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saying the word âslaveâ, what this clause
essentially said was â âUntil 1808, the
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Migration or Importation of enslaved individuals
of African descent cannot be regulated by
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the federal government, but only by the states,
to allow for each entity to make the best
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economic decision for their White citizens.â
At the end of the day, Southern states were
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able to benefit by keeping their property
and Northern states, we shouldnât forget,
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also got to benefit from the impact of slavery
on the Northern economy.
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The Slave Trade Clause prevented action on
the translatanic slave trade for twenty years,
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and the Three-Fifths Compromise lasted for
a LOT longer than that. It took 75 years before
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the United States eventually pivoted on slavery
and it took a Civil War and cost hundreds
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of thousands of lives, to get there.
So, what can we say about the Constitutional
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Convention? I mean what can we say about the
Founding Fathers? So often we are taught about
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how great they were, and how great this founding
document they wrote is. But remember that
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nearly half of the delegates at the Constitutional
Convention owned enslaved people.
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Itâs important to understand who was, and
who wasnât included, in their vision of
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this new nation. Who would be the beneficiaries
of its promise of democracy, and whose bodies
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would be used and cast aside in pursuit of
it? Sometimes, American history demands that
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we hold sets of complicated truths at the
same time.
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These delegates at the constitutional convention
founded a country that would go on to create
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unprecedented opportunity and upward mobility
for millions of people across generations,
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but it did so, at the direct expense of millions
and millions of other people. Both are true.
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And both are America. And holding multiple
truths that seem at odds with one another,
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well, thatâs American history in a nutshell.
Iâll see you next time.
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