Slavery Clauses in the U.S. Constitution

Impact

At first glance, the slavery provisions of the Constitution were enormously successful. Despite northern opposition to slavery—and some southern opposition to the slave trade provision—the people of the states ratified the Constitution. For the next seventy-two years the Constitution protected slavery and slaveholders. The slave population grew from 698,000 in 1790 to 3,954,000 in 1860. Slaveholders dominated the presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. Even when slave owners were not in office, they were able to secure positions for northerners sympathetic to slavery. But while the slave population grew rapidly, the population of the free states grew even faster. So, too, did opposition to slavery, not only in the United States but also, indeed, throughout the world. In 1787 slavery was legal everywhere in the Atlantic world except Massachusetts, New Hampshire, the soon-to-be state of Vermont, England, and France. By 1860 slavery was legal only in the American South, a few Spanish islands in the Caribbean, and Brazil.

For a majority of northerners, and for most of the Western World, slavery was a “relic of barbarism,” as the Republican Party platform called it in 1856. Still, the Constitution may have protected slavery too well. There was no political or constitutional way to end bondage, even in the far-distant future. Southerners, meanwhile, saw the election of Abraham Lincoln as a direct threat to slavery, even though neither the president nor Congress had any power to touch slavery in the fifteen slave states. The eleven southern states seceded to protect slavery, which Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens called “the cornerstone of the Confederacy.” When these states left the Union, they lost the ability to block constitutional changes. Thus, in 1865 the United States added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ending slavery forever.