Slavery in America -- Three Compromises, All

Slavery in America -- Three Compromises, All Compromised Wrong -- the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the Compromise of 1850

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal" -- except for Black American men, of course, who are only 3/5ths equal, according to the Constitution of the United States. The ringing words about equality, penned by Jefferson, a guilty-minded slaveholder sound far less inspiring when wording from the actual text of the Constitution of the framers is incorporated into the text of the Declaration of Independence that he authored in 1776.

The 3/5ths compromise sounds bizarre simply on its surface -- it stated that enslaved human beings would count, for taxation and population counts for the Electoral College, as 3/5ths of a person. The conflict reflects one of the central problems of the Constitutional Convention. The convention was torn between the desire between the value the American Southern states placed upon state's rights and the Northern states' desire to have a stronger federal government that could curtail and limit the spread of the Southern way of life and the South's so-called peculiar institution. (Slavery Compromises, 2004)

The South, however, believed that slaves should count in their influence in Congress, even if these slaves were treated as chattel and could not vote. Thus, despite the fact even the slaveholding Jefferson, as well as the other founding fathers believed slavery to be contradictory with American principles of liberty, as Jefferson said,

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.... The spirit of the Master is abating," the compromise was included to placate the Southern states. (Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson; "Slavery Compromises," 2004)

Thus, slavery was incorporated into the constitution in an absurdity -- legally and logically -- and as a compromise that pleased no one. Even at the time, Jefferson said, "We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is on one scale, and self- preservation in the other." But because "Cotton is King!" As Hammond of South Carolina countered, the compromise was allowed to stand -- at least while America remained, North and South, largely agrarian and thus more sympathetic to the Southern economic needs.

But while the North and the South were conflicted politically over the strength of the federal government from 1776-1819, the industrialization of the North and expansion to the West from 1820-1850 pushed the two regions still further. The Missouri Compromise came into being 1820 when many of the people who had helped settle that new territory were slave owners and wished to keep their slaves after Missouri became a state, despite Congress' avowed intent to prevent the spread of slavery. It had been argued that even if the South could not be bankrupted for the good of the national economy, at least the spread of slavery could be curtailed in the North, and quarantined, like a disease to the southern regions of the country. (Bushong, 2004)

But Missouri slave owners wanted to keep their slaves as property as well as have their territory join the American Union as a state. Northerners in Congress did not want slavery spreading further and refused to accept Missouri as a state of slave owners. But, to preserve the union, Missouri was allowed to join the United States as a "slave state" while Maine joined the United States as a "Free State." The Missouri compromise was designed to keep the numbers of "Free" and "Slave States" even, even while it allowed slavery into a new state of the Union. (Bushong, 2004)

Proponents and opponents of the 1820 Compromise, however, did not take into consideration that, unlike other property, slaves did not perceive themselves as such.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," said Lincoln, a statement brought into sharp relief in the political aftermath of the 1820 compromise. It soon became clear that in an American nation filled with the words of pro-freedom rhetoric, where now certain individuals were deemed human and property both, depending on where they resided, more and more slaves would feel justified in fleeing the South in greater and greater numbers.

Also, angered by the compromise, many of the people in the Northern states would help shelter the runaway slaves, by helping them find work and a home in what came to be known as the underground railroad. Before 1850, there were laws that said runaway slaves should be returned to their owners, but very few people obeyed those laws. Again, the absurdity of the legal institution of slavery, and the political falsity of a nation half slave and half free was highlighted. But economically, the plantation owners feared a loss of their property and economy thought that runaway laws should be enforced.