While defending the Constitution I am met often with two questions: 1) If the founders were so great and the Constitution such a great document, why did it preserve slavery? 2) Why did the Constitution treat black people as 3/5th a person? The answers to these questions are rather simple when fact and truth are employed. To understand the truth, we start with some basics…
In June of 1776 the Lee Resolution was ratified and was the legislative action that authorized the Declaration of Independence. This Resolution was a three step process to declaring independence from Great Britain and establishing a union of States:
“Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.”
The Colonies knew that once they became thirteen independent and sovereign States and formed alliances with foreign nations to break free from the hold of Great Britain, the most important thing they could do would be to form a union of States. If they failed to form a union, everything that they sacrificed for independence would have been in vain. They had just bankrupted themselves, invited foreign nations onto their soil. Failure to unite could result in their servitude once more. A union would mutually protect their sovereignty from external attack.
As Thomas Jefferson correctly stated, the Constitution would have to be ratified by the “whole American people.” The framers needed all the States to consent. Immediately after the revolution, the victors could have very well attempted to force the other States to unite. However, they never intended to form the union by force, as they never intended to keep it together by force. James Madison said, in a letter to Robert Walsh (27 Nov. 1819) that “the Constitution was ‘the result of mutual deference & Concession’.” They knew the only way to form a lasting union, a union based upon Liberty, was to do so by consent.
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And consent by a group dependent upon slavery was required. They (the Northern colonies) could have no more forced the Southern colonies into submission than they could have forced the French from Louisiana, or the Spanish out of Mexico.
ReplyDeleteAnd consent by a group dependent upon slavery was required.
DeleteGood point.
The 3/5 clause was put in the constitution for the same reason the war of northern aggression was fought. It was all about the inferior and dependent northern states maintaining control of south and it's growing self-sufficiency.
ReplyDeleteBecause according to the quite correct understanding of those blessed with clear, well-functioning minds, a "nation" by definition (refer to earlier Black's Law Dictionaries) is composed of people drawn from the same racial stock - period. Racial kinship is a requirement. You may wish to revisit Washington's Farewell Address" and pay particular note to the section where he speaks of our (then) commonality, saying something along the lines of "same people, same language, same religion with slight differences." I know contemplating such hurts today's delicate mind, but back then the obvious was understood and not a cause for angst and hand-wringing. The U.S. was not to be an "experiment" or a "melting pot." That idiocy was forced upon us by Mr. Lincoln's War and the behind the scenes manipulation that led to the changes in U.S. immigration policy in 1880, shut down in 1924, and then not unlike a damn zombie, resurrected in 1965 with the Hart-Cuellar Act.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, only a complete "universalist" idiot can possible conclude that Negroes and Caucasians are "equal" anyway. Regardless of the trillions spent on both education and welfare over the previous decades, the I.Q. of the North American Negro remains at 85, two standard deviations below their Caucasian counterparts. Don't "feel", think!
Good post or when all else fails, read history 'pre 61'.
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