slavery over the prevailing sentiment of the American people by the same tactics which is successfully employed for the next seventy years, is, for the first time, witnessed. Although our fathers were unable to abolish slavery at once, so great was the magnitude to which it had attained, and so deeply had it rooted itself in the interest of some of the southern colonies, still they expected that the northern states would continue to emancipate their slaves as some of them already had done, and by a prudential legislation to restrict slavery in the southern states, so that for the want of territory it would ultimately become extinct. But after the constitution had been framed, with an utter silence in regard to slavery, except a clause which contained an article against an immediate and absolute prohibition to importing negro slaves, the representatives of Georgia and South Carolina came forward and declared “that their constituents can never accede to a constitution containing such an article;”[1] that if such a clause is retained they might regard these two States out of the Union. To obviate the objections of these two factious colonies, a compromise was effected, extending the slave trade franchise twenty years, with the implication that at the expiration of that time Congress might prohibit it. Encouraged by the success of their demand, they now make an humble request on the plea of equity, for the rendition of fugitive slaves from one state to another, as a kind of sugar-coat to the constitution for the tender stomachs of the southern colonies. The horror of slave-catching was not then realized by the northern states, the most of whom owned slaves,
- ↑ The African trade in slaves had long been odious to most of the states, and the importation of slaves into them had been prohibited. Particular states, however, continued the importation and were extremely averse to any restriction on their power to do so. In the convention the former states were anxious in framing a new constitution, to insert a provision for an immediate and absolute stop to the trade. The latter were not only averse to any interference on the subject, but solemnly declared that their constituents would never accede to a constitution containing such an article. Out of this conflict grew a middle measure providing that Congress should not interfere until 1808. Writings and Times of Madison 111.150.
