Joseph Edgerton - The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery

As to my personal opinion in regard to slavery, I am free to say I consider it an evil, which I hope will be eradicated from the earth, but I do not regard it as the greatest of evils, nor do I consider that it requires political action from the Federal government. On the contrary, I believe that while the question of slavery might be safely agitated, with a view to political action, in a consolidated or imperial government, or even in an American Federal State, it cannot under our Federal system of government be safely or rightly agitated as a national question. Its agitation as such has done more to alienate and embitter the two sections of our Union – more to rouse the spirit of slavery aggression and extension, and to tighten the bonds and increase the burdens of the slave, than it has done to effect emancipation. Slavery is an evil permitted by Providence for ends that time will reveal. From this form of social evil, he is still educing good, far more good to the slaves, as a class, than to the masters as a class. It must not be suddenly nor rashly dealt with. Like a disease that pervades the blood or the whole constitution of a man, it needs not, for it cannot be reached by, the exterminating knife or cautery of the surgeon; it requires the gradual, purifying and alterative influences of gentle medicines, that work their way almost imperceptibly to the very principle and seat of the malady.

For my part, while I yield to no man in my love of liberty and the rights of man, I frankly say I had rather that the "rivulet of African slavery" flow on for five hundred years to come, than to see around me the fragments of a dissevered Union. In that Union, and the silent steady workings of its glorious principles, more than in the conflict of antagonist and angry parties, rest the hopes, not alone of African emancipation, but of unborn nations.

The American Union grew out of the exigencies of the times. A common cause and a common danger united the colonies first in resistance to the aggressions and exactions of the British government, and finally in the overthrow of its power over them. With the declaration of their independence, came the conviction of the necessity of their permanent Union, and this conviction after much of doubt and debate, resulted in the adoption of the Articles of Confederation by the final ratification of Maryland, on 1st March, 1781, which continued in force until the present Constitution went into operation.

So long as the States were engaged in the war of the Revolution, although the confederation was found to be in many things weak and imperfect, amid the dangers and anxieties of those years of trial its defects were overlooked or supplied by the earnest patriotism of our fathers, and it accomplished its end in the triumph of independence. But it was not long after the peace of 1783, when the Congress came to carry on the Federal government with reference to the ends of peace and the commercial policy and general prosperity of the United States, that it was found that the Articles of Confederation could no longer answer as the Constitution of the United States. A leading writer of that day in addressing the public upon the subject, after enumerating many of the defects of the Confederation with reference to the powers of the Congress, summed up the whole in these brief words, "In short, they may declare everything but do nothing."

Judge Story remarks in speaking of this period of our history – "That the confederation had at least totally failed as an effectual instrument of government. It stood the shadow of a mighty name."

Judge Marshall on the same subject says – "The confederation was apparently expiring from mere debility."

Judge Story further says – " It is, indeed, difficult to over-charge any picture of the gloom end apprehension which pervaded the public councils, as well as the private meditations of the ablest men of the country. "

It was under such circumstances that the convention for forming the present Constitution of the Union was called.

Into this convention were brought by the delegates of the States, the same unceasing jealousy and watchfulness, which had marked the formation of the confederation, in respect to the powers to be confided to the general government.

In the Articles of Confederation it had been declared "that each State retained its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right not expressly delegated to the United States."

The States were generally unwilling to surrender anything of their internal sovereignty. They claimed then as they claim now, full right and power to regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way, and were willing to surrender to the general government only such powers as were necessary to the complete efficiency of a Federal government in attaining the purposes of the Union. These were in the language of Alexander Hamilton:

"The common defence of the members; the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries."

The difficulty of obtaining a ratification of the Constitution by the people of the States, was not less than the difficulty of framing it in convention. Georgia, New Jersey and Delaware unanimously approved the Constitution. It was supported by large majorities in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland and South Carolina. It was carried in Massachusetts, New York and Virginia only by a small majority. North Carolina and Rhode Island were the last to adopt it, and the former at first rejected it.

In the address of the convention to Congress on presenting the Constitution with the recommendation for its submission to and approval by the States, the convention say: "The Constitution which we now present, is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable." In these few words of the framers of the Constitution, expressing its reason or spirit, we find the true guide to its interpretation and administration. The spirit of compromise, so far as relates to the clashing views or conflicting interests of different States or sections of the Union, pervades the Constitution in every part, and especially is this the case in reference to the now all-absorbing question of negro slavery.

What was the state of this institution at the adoption of the Constitution, and how did the Constitution deal with it?

The first introduction of African slaves into the American colonies was in 1620. The total number imported by means of the African slave trade between 1715 and 1790, was about 300,000. When the Constitution was ratified in 1790, the total number of slaves in all the States and territories was near 700,000. All the States ratifying the Constitution, except Massachusetts, held slaves; Virginia the largest number – over 293,000; New Hampshire the smallest number – 158. Even the granite hills of New Hampshire were not then free from the feet of bondmen.

Our fathers were not responsible for the existence of slavery in their midst. As already stated, the introduction of slaves had commenced in 1620, 156 years before the declaration of independence, and the institution had under the patronage of the British government, insidiously grown up and strengthened itself, especially in the Southern States, which were adapted to negro labor. There it had interwoven itself with the entire fabric of the social and domestic relations, and could not be suddenly or rashly severed without involving greater evils than its own existence.

It is undoubtedly true that a large number of the framers of the Constitution were themselves slaveholders, among them George Washington himself. With these men domestic slavery, though it might have been regarded as an evil, was certainly not looked upon as a mortal sin, nor were they, whatever might have been their theoretical opinions, practical believers in the doctrine of universal equality of rights or universal suffrage.