VIII.

Aug.

CHAP. over commerce was referred consisted of Langdon, King, Johnson, the aged William Livingston of New 1787. Jersey, Clymer, Dickinson, Martin, Madison, William22. son, Cotesworth Pinckney, and Baldwin,' a large majority of them venerable for uprightness and ability. Their report, made on the third day, granted to the United States the power to lay a tax of ten dollars on every imported slave,' and the power to prohibit the slave-trade after the year 1800.

24.

25.

On the twenty-fifth, when the report of the committee of eleven was taken up, Sherman once more resist ed the duty "as acknowledging men to be property" by taxing them as such under the character of slaves; and Madison supported him, saying: "I think it wrong to admit in the constitution the idea that there can be property in men." But the clause was unanimously held fast as a discouragement of the traffic.

Cotesworth Pinckney then moved to extend the time allowed for the importation of slaves till the year 1808. Gorham was his second. Madison spoke earnestly against the prolongation; but, without further debate, the motion prevailed by the votes of the three New England states, Maryland, and the three southernmost states, against New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia.'

"It ought to be considered," wrote Madison at the time, "as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever

VIII.

within these states a traffic which has so long and so CHAP. loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy.. Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if 1787. an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed 25. from the oppressions of their European brethren!"1

The confederation granted no power to interfere with the slave-trade. The new constitution gave power to prohibit it in new states immediately on their admission, in existing states at the end of the year 1807. Louisiana, by annexation to the union, lost the license to receive slaves from abroad. On the second day of December, 1806, Thomas Jefferson, president of the United States of America, addressed this message to congress: "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe."

Unanimous legislation followed the words from the president, and as the year 1808 broke upon the United States, the importation of slaves had ceased. And did slavery have as peaceful an end? Philanthropy, like genius and like science, must bide its time. Man cannot hurry the march of the supreme power, to which years are as days.

Two members of the convention, with the sincere integrity which clears the eye for prophetic vision, 1 The Federalist, No. xlii. 2 Journals of Congress, v. 468.

Aug.

CHAP. read the doom of slaveholding. Mason, fourteen VIII. years before, in a paper laid before the legislature 1787. of Virginia, had given his opinion that as the nat 25. ural remedy for political injustice the constitution

Aug.

July

11.

22.

should by degrees work itself clear by its own innate strength, the virtue and resolution of the commu、 nity; and he added: "The laws of impartial Providence may avenge upon our posterity the injury done to a set of wretches whom our injustice hath debased almost to a level with the brute creation. These remarks were extorted by a kind of irresistible, perhaps an enthusiastic, impulse; and the author of them, conscious of his own good intentions, cares not whom they please or offend."'

During a debate, in July, on the value of slaves, Mason observed of them that they might in cases of emergency themselves become soldiers." On another Aug. day he called to mind that Cromwell, when he sent commissioners to Virginia to take possession of the country, gave them power to arm servants and slaves. He further pointed out that the British might have prevailed in the South in the war of the revolution had they known how to make use of the slaves; that in Virginia the royal governor invited them to rise at a time when he was not in possession of the country, and, as the slaves were incapable of self-organization and direction, his experiments by proclamation, addressed to them in regions not within his sway, totally

VIII.

failed; but that in South Carolina, where the British CHAP. were in the full possession of the country, they might have enfranchised and enrolled the slaves for the con- 1787. Aug. solidation and establishment of British 22. But power. the civil and military officers in those days of abject corruption chose rather to enrich themselves by shipping the slaves to the markets of the West Indies. Five months later Madison, in a paper addressed to the country, remarked: "An unhappy species of population abounds in some of the states who, during the calm of the regular government, are sunk below the level of men; but who, in the tempestuous scenes of civil violence, may emerge into the human character, and give a superiority of strength to any party with which they may associate themselves." Slaveholding was to be borne down only on the field of battle.

1

The dignity and interests of the United States alike
demanded a grant of power to the general govern-
ment for the regulation of foreign as well as domestic
trade. Without it the navigation of the country
would have been at the mercy of foreign restrictions.
For this regulation the new constitution required,
as in all other acts of legislation, no more than a
majority of the two houses of congress.
A strong
opposition started up in the South under the lead
of Charles Pinckney and Martin, inflamed by Ma-
son and by Randolph; but it was in vain. Madi-
son, Spaight, and Rutledge defended the report of
the eleven like statesmen, free from local influences
or prejudice. It was clearly stated that the ships
of nations in treaty with the United States would

1 Madison in the Federalist, No. xliii, published 25 Jan., 1788.
11

VOL. II.

29.

Aug.

29.

CHAP. share in their carrying trade; that a rise in freight VIII. could be but temporary, because it would be attend1787. ed by an increase of southern as well as of northern shipping; that the West India trade was a great object to be obtained only through the pressure of a navigation act. Cotesworth Pinckney owned that he had been prejudiced against the eastern states, but had found their delegates as liberal and as candid as any men whatever. On the question, Delaware and South Carolina joined the united North against Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. After this vote the convention accepted unanimously the proposition to grant to the majority in the two branches of congress full power to make laws regulating commerce and navigation. Randolph was so much dissatisfied that he expressed a "doubt whether he should be able to agree to the constitution." Mason, more deeply in earnest, as yet held his emotions in check.

Of new states, the Virginia plan knew those only "lawfully arising within the limits of the United States," and for their admission vaguely required less than a unanimous vote; the committee of detail demanded the consent of two thirds of each house of congress, as well as the concurrence of the states within whose "limits" the new states should arise.

scope

At this stage Gouverneur Morris enlarged the and simplified the language of the article. The confederation had opened the door to Canada at its own choice alone, and to any other territory that could obtain the consent of two thirds of congress. It was no longer decent to hold out to Canada an