Slave Nation (37 page)

21
. Ibid. 478

22
. Ibid. 475

23
. Ferling,
Leap in the Dark
, 281–3, describes them as members of the political elite. “No delegate resembled the activists…of twenty years before. No urban artisans or laborers…were in attendance. Nor had any small farmers…been appointed. Southern yeomen who possessed small farms but no slaves were noticeably absent as well, as were the inhabitants of rustic back country villages.” Of course women and blacks remained unrepresented.

24
. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. I, 476. According to Yates, on June 29, Madison said, “If there was real danger, I would give the smaller states the defensive weapons—But there is none from that quarter. The great danger to our general government is the great southern and northern interests of the continent, being opposed to each other. Look to the votes in Congress, and most of them stand divided by the geography of the country, not according to the size of the states.” Madison’s notes are silent about such a comment on that date. Yates may have failed to understand the import of his speech of June 30, or just misdated it.

25
. See Nash,
Race and Revolution
, 25–55, for an analysis which suggests that the North did not have to accede to the lower South’s demands to maintain slavery and the slave trade at the 1787 Convention.

26
. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. I, 486

27
. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. II, 9–10

28
. Farrand.
Records
, Vol. I, 201

29
. See H. James Henderson,
Party Politics in the Continental Congress
, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1974) 383–429 discussing various proposals to separate the nation into two or three countries as the Continental Congress demonstrated its failure to address national problems in the post-war period. See also, Calfin C. Jillson,
Constitution Making: Conflict and Consensus in the Federal Convention of 1787
, 64–100 (Agathon Press Inc., 1988) illustrating how the regional differences were openly discussed around the question of representation.

30
. Much of the important business of the Philadelphia Convention was done “offstage,” in social settings, so that even the diarist’s attempt to capture the debates would not identify the currents of views and opinions which circulated. Washington’s diary noted frequent dinners and teas with various delegates. Farrand, who compiled the records of the Convention, did not pay attention to such matters. “The social context in which the delegates moved…did not interest Farrand.” This “caused him to delete passages about Washington’s and other delegates’ recreations and amusements in Philadelphia.” Hutson,
Supplement to Farrand
, 1n1

31
. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. I: May 30, Pinckney, 36; May 31, Pinckney and Rutledge, 53.

32
. Ibid. 486

33
. Under that plan, the Senate was a smaller body whose members had a longer term, chosen by members of the House from nominees by the state legislature. The difference between the houses was only that the Senate would provide enhanced stability, and perhaps wisdom—another check on the risk of excesses of democracy. Banning,
Sacred Fire
,134–137

34
. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. I, 488–9, proposals at 507–8

35
. He had proposed that appropriation bills originate only in the House of Representatives. This proposal was included in some subsequent drafts, and a watered down version appears in Art. I Sec. 7 of the Constitution.

36
. Jefferson’s draft territorial ordinance in 1784 proposed that new states come into the union on an “equal basis” with the original states. See Peter S. Onuf,
Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press) 67.

37
. Luther Martin (MD) reported that the committee established the following week to seek a solution to the small state–large state dispute discussed the likelihood that lightly populated states would increase in population more rapidly than developed ones, and “thereby enormously increase their influence in the national councils.” Farrand,
Records,
Vol. IV, 189

38
. See
Chapter 9
note 40

39
. Robert G. Kennedy,
Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause
(Oxford University Press, 2003)11–16

40
. Banning,
American Sphinx
, 68

41
. See
Chapter 9
note 8

42
. Isaacson,
Benjamin Franklin
, 150–1, describes Franklin’s calculation of the growth rate of the colonies in 1751.

43
. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. I, 509

44
. Farrand,
Framing of the Constitution
, 27, 96–7

45
. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. I, 511

46
. Ibid.

47
. Ibid.

48
. Ibid. 514

49
. Ibid. 515

50
. Ibid.

51
. Max Farrand,
Framing of the Constitution
, 110, whose volumes
The Records of the Federal Convention
provide the most information about the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention and are relied upon by virtually every scholar, was wrong when he minimized the role of slavery at the convention. “In 1787, slavery was not the important question; it might be said that it was not the moral question that it later became. The proceedings of the federal convention did not become known until the slavery question had grown into the paramount issue of the day. Men naturally were eager to know what the framers of the Constitution had said and done upon this all-absorbing topic. This led to an overemphasis of the slavery question in the convention that has persisted to the present day. As a matter of fact, there was comparatively little said on the subject in the convention. Madison was one of the very few men who seemed to appreciate the real division of interests in this country.” Modern scholar Lance Banning,
Sacred Fire
, 549n48, agrees with Farrand. “With most recent students of the convention, I have concluded that slavery itself, although the subject of some bitter words, seldom generated serious, prolonged divisions at the meeting. Most northern delegates were unprepared to challenge the insistence of Georgia and the Carolinas that they would not concur in a unanimous recommendation unless their basic demands were met. The three-fifths formula, familiar from the old Confederation, got the meeting past a number of potential difficulties with relative ease; the old idea that there was an important three-fifths compromise is now universally rejected.” Historian Don E. Fehrenbacher,
Dred Scott Case
, 80–1 takes the same approach, while viewing the ordinance and the Constitution separately. Finkelman, “Slavery and the Constitutional Convention” 226–58, has viewed the Northwest Ordinance separately from the Constitutional Convention and has been critical of its draftsmanship because the slavery clause was neither specific enough nor well integrated with the rest of the Ordinance. See his “Slavery and Bondage” in “Empire of Liberty,” in Williams,
Northwest Ordinance
, 61–95. His analysis tends to confirm our thesis that the slavery clause was attached in haste because the situation at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia required both haste and secretiveness. Similarly, Mark D. Kaplanoff, “The Federal Convention and the Constitution,” in Jack P. Green and J. R. Pole, Eds.,
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution
, (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991) 457–70 at 463, says: “Certainly questions relating to slavery were among the most vexatious at the Convention, but the overall importance of slavery in the formation of the Constitution should not be overestimated.…The issue did not dominate the proceedings of the Convention nor intrude much into the text of the Constitution.” Rakove,
National Politics
, has no separate index category for slavery. His more recent contribution, Rakove,
Original Meanings
, 58–93, has a much more extensive discussion. Lynd,
Class Conflict
, 153–213 sought to move slavery toward a more significant role in the emergence of the nation by connecting the Constitutional Convention and the Northwest Ordinance. Robinson,
Structure of American Politics
, 41–51, made a similar effort, by connecting slavery to land values.

Our view of Lynd’s analysis appears in
Chapter 11
. Collier,
Decision in Philadelphia
, 204–222 discuss Lynd’s detective work in ferreting out the interaction between the Convention and the Congress. They sense there was a deal, but are unsure of its details. They were hesitant to suggest that the North was ready to walk out of the Convention over the slavery question.

52
. Only New Jersey and Delaware dissented.

53
. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. I, 522–3

54
. The Committee also recommended that bills for raising revenue originate in the House and not be subject to amendment in the Senate. This recommendation followed Franklin’s earlier proposal to protect the wealthier colonies from having their money spent by the poorer ones, but was later dropped.

55
. This enhancement was qualified somewhat in the following week by a change in the initial number of representatives in favor of the “smaller” states.

The small states were NH, RI, CN, NJ, DE, GA (and possibly MD; GA identified with the wealthy slave states). Five of them were clearly anti-slavery. Two committees reported successively on the number of representatives to be allotted initially to each state. Here is how they defined the large and small states:

The states with fewer than five votes on the first and six votes on the second count would be considered relatively small under either count.

The debate on July 10 reflected the efforts of South Carolina to reduce the “northern advantage” by a variety of motions, all of which were defeated. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. I, 566-71.

The enhancement of the voting power of the northern states in the July 10 resolution was in part a response to Patterson’s statement of July 9, questioning the initial allocation which took account of slaves. “He could regard Negro slaves in no light but as property. They are not free agents, have no personal liberty, no faculty of acquiring property, but on the contrary are themselves property, and like other property, entirely at the will of the master. Has a man in Virginia a number of votes in proportion to the number of his slaves? And if Negroes are not represented in the states to which they belong, why should they be represented in the general government? What is the true principle of representation? It is an expedient by which an assembly of certain individuals chosen by the people is substituted in place of the inconvenient meeting of the people themselves. If such a meeting of the people was actually to take place would the slaves vote? They would not. Why then should they be represented?” He was also against such an indirect encouragement of the slave trade; observing that Congress in their act relating to the change of the eighth article of confederation had been ashamed to use the term “slaves” and had substituted a description. Farrand,
Records
, Vol. I, 561

56
. See his comments in Farrand,
Records,
Vol. I, 463–5: June 29, 485–7; June 30, 529–31; July 5, 551; July 7, 562; July 9, repeating his recommendation for a compromise of June 30; July 14, Farrand,
Records,
Vol. II, 8–11.

57
. Staughton Lynd excepted, historians have not addressed this question because they assumed that the answer was given by the delegates to the Continental Congress in New York, and have debated about who, among them, should get the credit.

58
.
Chapter 1
note 14

59
. See
Chapter 10
note 17. The most used proposal was that appropriation bills should originate in the House of Representatives.

60
. Isaacson,
Benjamin Franklin
, 463–7

61
. Isaacson,
Benjamin Franklin
, 436–70. Franklin did present a petition to Congress in 1790, to no avail.

62
. See
Chapter 12

63
. Lynd, “Compromise,” in Williams,
Northwest Ordinance
, 187–88, lists the overlapping membership of the two bodies (Forham, King [MASS], Johnson [CN], Blount [NC], Few, Pierce [GA], and Madison [VA]), and at 207–8, lists those who arrived from Philadelphia in time to take part in the deliberations leading to the Northwest Ordinance (Blount, Hawkins [NC], Pierce, Few [GA], Lee [VA]).

64
. His explanation of his role in the Hutchinson letters is an example.

65
. Isaacson,
Benjamin Franklin
, at index for Richard Henry Lee; Wood,
Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
, at index for Richard Henry Lee.

66
. McGaughy,
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia
,