Slavery Enshrined?

mowque

Banned
What if, against all the odds, slavery was mentioned in the Constitution. More importantly, it was was mentioned favorably. In TTL slavery is a 'right' and the USA government views it that way. How would this effect things?

Do you think it would merely cause the issue to come to a head sooner, later, more violent, less violent?
 
Hmm. It depends on how slavery is defined in the constitution. Is it reserved for members of the "negro race"? Or is slavery permitted for all? If the former, the government will have codified racial supremacy into its founding document. The informal racism present in most nations of that period becomes a fundamental part of the new government, and within a generation we'll probably see a primitive apartheid-like system. If the latter, you'll have a hard time convincing the proto-Americans that the revolution was about "liberty", and many will feel betrayed to the point of armed resistance.
 
Hm- if it's a right, then the matter isn't left to the states.

Massachusetts abolished slavery (by judicial fiat) in 1783, and popular opinion in the state was pretty definitively anti-slavery. I think there'd be outcry and much greater opposition to ratification.
 

Thande

Donor
Hm- if it's a right, then the matter isn't left to the states.

Massachusetts abolished slavery (by judicial fiat) in 1783, and popular opinion in the state was pretty definitively anti-slavery. I think there'd be outcry and much greater opposition to ratification.

So the Constitutional Convention fails. I believe only New England was strongly opposed at the time (New York still had the third largest slave population in the former colonies) so you might get a situation where only New England doesn't confederate into the USA and the remainder is all pro-slavery.

Might be an earlier POD for a Decades of Darkness-type USA, only a bit more moderate, without the vengefulness from a lost war, and with the population of New York and New Jersey added to it.
 
I think the most likely time for slavery to enter the Constitution would be as a portion of the Compromise of 1790. This is the compromise that allowed the federal government to assume state debt and placed the national capital in the South.

Say that Pennsylvania fights harder to get the capital along the Susquehanna River (where the first Congressional vote decided to place it, an idea supported by Washington himself) and the South agrees...in return for a Constitutional Amendment saying something to the effect of...Congress shall make no laws abridging the right of negro slavery or affecting a state's right concerning said institution.

This would be ratified in 1792 after both Tennessee and Kentucky enter the Union. Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire will never ratify this Amendment. But sectional tension will flare up only a year later with the passage of a federal fugitive slave law. With slavery in the Constitution it will be the North that takes a state's rights approach especially concerning the enforcement of fugitive slave laws and the right of sojourn and transit. Slavery in the Territories will remain ambiguous but a Supreme Court decision in the early 1800s will give the Federal government the right to determine the status of slavery in the Territories, which angers both sides depending on who controls Congress and the Presidency.

Benjamin
 

JohnJacques

Banned
Interestingly, New England may not be as opposed in the beginning as you think.

It was well known that the commercial class in New England supported the institution of slavery. This was because their shipping at the time relied on the "Triangle trade".

That said, it may have a rougher time gaining ratification in Massachusetts and will bring the issue to the fore much quicker in American history. But ultimately, Massachusetts will ratify it because as the holdouts discovered in OTL, there was no real alternative.
 
Ayup. Pennsylvania, Western New Jersey, upstate New York (including Vermont) - these were all much more anti-slavery than New England in the pre-1800 era. In fact only Massachusetts and Vermont were strongly anti-slavery in the revolution period.

It isn't only that New England had trade links involving slavery, though that kept slavery enshrined in Rhode Island and Connecticut well into the 1830s, and in New Hampshire up till the late 1840s IIRC. It is also that they came at the slavery question from a very different perspective from the Methodists and Quakers to the south and east. The latter two had moral qualms with the institution of slavery on the basis of their faith and common human decency. New England wasn't anti-slavery so much as it was radically republican. The revolution in New England in a lot of ways mirrored the social revolution of early Revolutionary France. Slavery wasn't in line with shouts of "Liberty or Death!" so Massachusetts and Vermont banned it. Just don't misinterpret that as them caring.

Once the initial wave of revolutionary enthusiasm receded, New England was on the back foot on the slavery issue relative to Pennsylvania and Ohio.
 
The Constitution specifically refers and accepts the existance of slavery in several places, including the infamous three-fifths provision, none of which matters if an adequate majority wishes to amend the Constitution.
 
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