Probably inspired by the 1619 Project, there has been a fair amount of commentary about the relationship between the Constitution and slavery over the last few months. Here are my thoughts on the matter:
- There was no 18th century equivalent of John Calhoun among the Founding Fathers. No one was making the case that slavery was a positive good. The slaveowner FFs were perfectly aware that they were exposing themselves to a potent charge of hypocrisy. Slavery was defended solely because it was viewed as an economic necessity by the plantation owners.
- There was a widespread belief, even among slave owners, that slavery might ultimately expire on its own accord at the time the Constitution was written and ratified. That, of course, was before the invention of the cotton gin and the incredible growth of the cotton cloth industry.
- Without the South, there would have been no United States of America in 1788. Period. The implications of that are mind-boggling.
- As a result of these facts, the FFs engineered a grubby, short-term compromise in the hope that the problem would disappear of its own accord in the long term. The Constitution neither eliminated slavery nor made its abolition impossible.
- Realistically speaking, can you blame the FFs? Would we have been better off in the long run without the Union and the Constitution, even with the Civil War and the failures of Reconstruction thrown in the middle? Are the FFs to be condemned because they didn’t foresee the invention of the cotton gin and its implications for American politics, and because they weren’t willing to vote for their own economic extinction? Would you have done anything different if you were in the same position? I don’t see it.