Matter Of Slavery Since The Constitution example essay topic

The Constitution became a weapon for sectional discord and tension in the years preceding the Civil War. When it was framed the Constitution was deliberately unclear on the subject of slavery, even though men like Thomas Jefferson were for outlawing the institution and others, southerners for the most part, were all for codifying it. Instead, their means compromise to ignore the issue proved to be a curse to posterity since the indecision and confusion of the nation on the slavery issue was thus embedded in the cornerstone of its government. Because the Constitution speaks of property and state's rights as well as the equality of men without any specific clarification of the relationship of these principles to slavery, it was used to support both sides of the debate.

Because of this ambiguity on the matters of states' rights, of property rights and of the very definition of 'all men' it buckled when confronted with the question of slavery, and the nation buckled with it. The identity of a state in relation to the nation is never properly defined in the Constitution, and this was a source of much conflict. From the beginning under the Articles of Confederation, the individual states were protective of their powers and only established a strong national government after much coaxing. Even then states were wary of outside influence and vociferous when regional concerns were threatened. As the political cartoon in Document F shows, the people were likely to take a national policy that ran contrary to their beliefs as being inherently tyrannical.

On the issue of slavery, the government wasn't even sure if it had the power to make a nationwide ruling because the Constitution could be interpreted to say both yes and no. On one side President James Buchanan said", [slave states] as sovereign states alone are responsible before God and the world for the slavery existing among them... on the basis of the Constitution". Jefferson Davis also harped on the state sovereignty issue, saying that he felt that the Constitution did not set the national government above the states and that each state was free to decide the matter of slavery since the Constitution made no explicit ruling. However, President Abraham Lincoln countered by saying that there was no sacred supremacy held by the states and that the states, being dependent on the Union, had no right to destroy it.

The difficulty in reconciling these two viewpoints was that they were both technically correct, according to the vague Constitution. The very fact that the United States had no national policy and was divided into free regions and slave regions, as illustrated in the map on Document A, shows that neither the national government nor the states were sure of their power. As a consequence they both kept over-reaching their respective domains and offending nearly everyone. They kept making uneasy compromises like popular sovereignty that appeased no one, except perhaps the author of the bill, until the whole haphazard construction fell apart. Another contradiction within the Constitution that contributed to the conflict was its definition of property rights and human rights.

Now, if one views slaves as property like 'An Anonymous Georgian' in Document B did, and then there should be no question as to whether or not they could cross state lines or be owned. The Georgian, possessed of this mindset, reviled the northern policy that said "they [southerners] shall not carry their property into their own land". However, if one views slaves as men then they should not be owned at all. This mindset, also justified by the Constitution ("All men are created equal"), made evasion of the Fugitive Slave Law, like through the posted warning to blacks in Document C, and seem right. Abolitionists and blacks certainly did not view the slave catchers as mere property collectors. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "An immoral law makes it a man's duty to break it, at every hazard".

William Lloyd Garrison eloquently described the Constitution that maintained a moral tone while still permitting the corrupt institution of slavery and the laws that support it, saying, "The words 'slaves' and 'slavery' are not to be found in the Constitution, and therefore, to the argument that it was never intended to give any protection or countenance to the slave system, it is sufficient to reply, that though no such words are contained in the instrument, other words were used, intelligently and specifically, to meet the needs of slavery". It seems that if abolitionists like Garrison were discontent then their slaveholding opponents would be pleased, but the evidence of men like the Anonymous Georgian and the expressed fear of southern secession that dominated President Buchanan's fourth annual address to Congress shows that neither side was happy. The Constitution attempted to please everyone by avoiding a specific definition of a slave as property or a man, but this ambivalence made what should be the decisive law of the land into a rhetorical weapon for each side to beat the other over the head with. The Constitution, by its conscious act of ignoring the slavery issue, may have provided for an easier birth of a nation, but their expediency only allowed the issue to fester until it exploded into war. All it really did was pass the problem on to their children, but perhaps our founding fathers should not be judged so harshly. At that time the nation was too weak to properly address the issue, and that weakness continued into the 1850's.

The Constitution was but a thin veil over an ugly sore on American society, over a racial conflict so deep that no document could ever provide a solution.