Black History Month : Black Rights and the Constitution

A statue in honor of the black soldiers of the American Revolution

Black History Month : Black Rights and the Constitution
part of a much larger article https://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/black-heroes-and-founders-of-the-great-american-revolution/
By The Founders:

‎”When the Constitution of the United States was framed, colored men voted in a majority of these States; they voted in the State of New York, in Pennsylvania, in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and North Carolina; and long after the adoption of the Constitution, they continued to vote in North Carolina and Tennessee also. The Constitution of the United States makes no distinction of color.”

~ The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution by Wm Cooper Neil & Harriet Beecher Stowe 1855

In fact, a number of state constitutions protected voting rights for blacks. The state constitutions of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania (all 1776), New York (1777), Massachusetts (1780), and New Hampshire (1784) included black suffrage. In 1874, Robert Brown Elliot, a member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina and a black man, stated ”When did Massachusetts sully her proud record by placing on her statute-book any law which admitted to the ballot the white man and shut out the black man? She has never done it; she will not do it.”

However, no state allowed slaves to vote and in South Carolina no free blacks could vote. When it was brought to the state for ratification, our Constitution was voted on by white and black citizens. In Baltimore, Maryland, more blacks voted than whites. Besides the right to vote, blacks in many of the states could hold office as did Wentworth Cheswell. The blacks used their votes well, working along side white abolitionists to end slavery in several states. These included Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York.

It has also been suggested that the Constitution was a proslavery document. Is it? There are only three references to the institution of slavery in the Constitution. The first is in Enumeration Clause in Article 1, Section 3. This is the famous 3/5 clause which some have pointed to as proof that the Founders viewed blacks as less than white. That may be true of some individuals, but not of the clause or the ideas behind the Constitution. Some delegates to the Constitution, especially those that were against slavery, argued that since slaves were considered property, they should not counted at all. The southern states wished them to be counted as a full person since their large slave populations would give those states greater representation and more power in Congress. A compromise was reached, the 3/5 clause. The effect of that clause was to reduce the number of representatives in the House for states with large slave populations and thereby reduce their power. This makes the clause antislavery.

The second mention is in Article 1, Section 9. In this section a date was set to end the importation of slaves. This was another compromise. It allowed the slave trade to continue for a period of twenty years, but then end it. It would be difficult to consider the ending of the slave trade as a proslavery clause.

The final mention of slavery is in Article 4, Section 2. This is the Fugitive Slave clause. That section of the Constitution deals with the states, their citizens, and extradition from one state to another. It holds that people who are bound in service in one state, cannot be excused from it because of the laws of another state. This is the most proslavery section of the Constitution since it allows owners to retrieve runaway slaves from other states, even those that outlawed slavery, but it alone does not make the Constitution proslavery.

Federal efforts against slavery did not end with the Constitution. In 1789, Congress passed a law which banned slavery in all federal territories. Five years later, in 1784, another antislavery law was passed. This one forbade exporting slaves from any state.

Sadly, this progress did not continue. As many of the generation of the Revolution passed away, so did many of their ideals. Beginning in the early 1800s, new laws were passed that limited the rights of blacks and women. This was in part, a political move by one party to limit the influence of the other, but it also reflected a loss of the revolutionary ideals. In 1809, Maryland disenfranchised black voters. Other states followed suit, such as North Carolina in 1835. Even before they were formally denied the vote, many blacks and women were prevented from voting by their white neighbors. This foreshadowed the treatment blacks would receive following the end of Reconstruction.

In 1820, with the passage of the Missouri Compromise, the few remaining Founders began to fear that slavery would destroy the country. Elias Boudinot said it woud be ”an end to the happiness of the United States.” John Adams went further by saying that removing the prohibition against slavery in the territories would bring an end to the United States. Thomas Jefferson lamented,

“I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.”

At this time, Congress also enacted the Fugitive Slave Law which allowed slave owners to enter free states to find their runaways. It also enabled the kidnapping and enslavement of many free blacks by claiming they were runaways. The Kansas-Nebraska Act pushed the country farther along the road that would take us to war, where finally, the slavery question would be settled.