Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania made an angry speech. He denounced slavery as an evil institution.
Charles Pinckney of South Carolina defended the existence of slavery in the United States. "In all ages," he said, "one half of mankind have been slaves."
George Mason of Virginia, a slave owner, wanted to free all slaves. He said Virginia attempted to do that when it was a British colony, but that the British government refused. He blamed the problem on British businessmen who made money from slavery.
Other delegates rose to denounce or defend slavery. But no one at the convention had the power to rule on whether slavery was right or wrong.
Everyone knew the convention would fail if they tried to write a constitution that banned slavery. The southern states would never accept it. They would refuse to be part of the United States.
Rufus King of Massachusetts said the convention should consider slavery only as a political matter. And that was what happened. The delegates accepted several political compromises on the issue.
James Wilson of Pennsylvania, for example, proposed a method of counting each state's population for purposes of representation. All white people and other free citizens would be counted as one person each. Every five slaves would be counted only as three people. This was called the "three-fifths" rule. The delegates accepted it.
The word "slave" was never used in the Constitution. The document simply used the words "all other persons." The three-fifths rule remained the law until the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution came into effect in 1868.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25