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A 20-year deal on the slave trade
The trade-off
Northerners worried that Southern states would keep bringing Africans across the Atlantic against their will to boost their representation in Congress. Southerners, whose economy depended on slavery and agricultural exports, wanted a two-thirds majority required for Navigation Acts, afraid the North's ship-controlling merchants would take advantage of them. South Carolina and Georgia would not budge. General Pinckney of South Carolina told the convention that South Carolina and Georgia could not do without slaves.
The deal fixed the ban date at 1808. James Madison, a conflicted slaveholder himself, saw the evil in it: twenty years would produce all the mischief that could be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves, and so long a term would be more dishonorable to the national character than saying nothing about it in the Constitution.
The Fugitive Slave Clause
Three days later, on August 28, the Fugitive Slave Clause made it a constitutional fact that enslaved people who ran away to a free state could be returned to slavery. The word slave was avoided again. On September 15, anti-slavery delegates won one small change: the clause went from a person legally held to service or labor to a person held to service or labor. Removing legally took out an implication of morality or justification.
What happened when the ban date arrived?
Congress passed a law ending the importation of enslaved people, effective January 1, 1808, and Thomas Jefferson signed it in 1807. The ban closed the legal Atlantic trade, but smuggling continued. The domestic slave trade grew sharply, moving enslaved people from the upper South to the cotton states. The Constitution's Article V also barred any amendment on the slave trade before 1808.
Why did Southerners fear Navigation Acts?
Navigation Acts regulate shipping and trade, and Northern merchants owned most of the ships. Southern planters exported tobacco, rice, and indigo, and they depended on that shipping. They feared a simple majority in Congress could force them to use Northern ships at high freight rates. A two-thirds requirement would have given Southern states a veto.
How did the Fugitive Slave Clause become law?
Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Act in 1793, giving the clause enforcement power. It let slaveholders recover escapees across state lines through federal courts and magistrates. Several Northern states later passed personal liberty laws against it. In 1850, Congress passed a stricter Fugitive Slave Act as part of that year's compromise.
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