Blacks and the Constitution

The Bi-polar and Bi-furcated Exclusion of African-Americans and the United States Constitution
by John R. Arnold

The American Constitution is a value system whose basic content stems from supposedly egalitarian conceptions of the unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America, authored by the founding fathers who also happened to be rich, many of whom were slave owners. Slave ownership contradicts the very spirit of United State’s Constitution. In fact, the Constitution may very well be a cleverly designed form of principality, as described by Niccolo Machiavelli: All the states, all the dominions under whose authority men have lived in the past and live now have been and are either republics or principalities [republics being representative government, or semi-representative government] (Bull, 1995).
The word "slavery" does not appear in the U.S. Constitution until the 13th amendment of 1865, which was ratified nearly 100 years after the Founding Fathers declared all men are created equal. Nevertheless, the initial Constitution of the American republic, by omission, gave indirect sanction to the institution of slavery. For example, the delegates, when determining congressional distribution and how and who to count as residents of particular states, agreed in the Continental Congress, as was determined in Article I of the U S Constitution: …which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons,including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons (U.S Constitution, Article I).
The Constitution then required, in Article 1, section 9, the return to their owners of “such persons” (fugitive slaves persons?) held to Service from crossing state lines, and it set the date for ending the “non-admitted to” slave trade, twenty years hence: …The migration or importation of such persons as any of the state now
existing shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9).
According to author Dorothy Twohig’s article, Species and Properties (Twohig, 1991), which was a review of President George Washington’s position and actions regarding the slavery issue, Twohig’s assumption was that Washington had serious philosophical issues with regard to continuing the institution of slavery. George Washington was thought to be against slavery; but he was one of the larges slave owners in the colonies. Twohig insists that Washington’s behavior was cowardly in not addressing the morality of the slavery issue and for him, in his position as the president of America, to keep his personal beliefs private, as well as continued to own slaves was nothing less than hypocrisy of morality; however, Washington’s will did free his slaves upon his death.
The moral of slavery was raised at the Constitutional Convention on several occasions. Ironically, George Mason, an aid to one of the largest slave owners, Thomas Jefferson, may have voiced the most eloquent attack on slavery at the Constitutional Convention when he said,[slavery]…produces the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant… Slavery discourages arts and manufactures.
The poor despise labor when they see it performed by slaves....I hold it essential ... that the general government should have the power to prevent the increase of slavery (Papers of George Mason, 1970). Conversely, Thomas Jefferson merely freed one of his nearly 200 hundred slaves; the one whom he had children with, Sally Hemmings, only after his death. In October 1802, while he was president, the story was published in newspapers that Thomas Jefferson, whose wife had died in 1782, was keeping his wife's slave half-sister, Sally Hemings, as a concubine and was producing children from her. Jefferson, who lived for 44 years after the death of his wife and who never remarried, never denied the story, but he never admitted it either. Sally Hemings was at his bedside when he died. Thomas Jefferson freed all five children of Sally Hemings either just before his death or in his will. Thomas Jefferson made provisions for Sally Hemmings in his will. These were the only slaves Thomas Jefferson freed (Sloan, 1998).
In the following years, the abolitionist movement would use the same anti-slavery arguments as Mason did, and bring to bear the same sense of moral outrage; but during the time of the ratification of the constitution the issue of slavery was evaded by the Founding Fathers, both as a word and as a moral challenge. It would ultimately take the tragic conflagration of the Civil War (1861-1865) to end human bondage in the United States and start the country along the elusive path to full racial equality.
One premise of why the wealthy founding fathers were reluctant to do away with the institution of slavery earlier may have been because they wanted to design America as a white police state. In hindsight, it appears the founding fathers main function was guarding the aristocrat’s estates from the poor. Even as late as 1830, President Andrew Jackson told Congress in his second Annual Message:
It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of
the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the
removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two important tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that their example
will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious advantages
(Richardson, 1908).
The majority society of early America was not a society of equals (as a republic should be) but a society of servants, slaves and poor whites. The government of this, so called, republic may have been a device set up deliberately by the wealthy as a form of protection, which may answer why the chief responsibility of the President of the United States of America was (and is) law enforcement.
The republic was originally designed only to represent the interests of the owners of property. This political scientist believes many Americans have been literally conditioned to accept the notion that a republic is better than a kingdom because citizens of a republic, be definition, are supposed to be free.
The American republic certainly was not designed with the best interest of blacks and Indians in mind and, it may not have been designed to make its non-wealthy citizens free either. Instead, it may have been designed to reduce the citizen’s rights from the status of endowments individuals were born with, into privileges accorded to them by the Bill of Rights and by the Founding Fathers; and these privileges could be taken away upon bad behavior.
The Federal Government views the rights conveyed by the Bill of Rights as privileges it can revoke, like the privilege of a driver's license. However, the reality is the traditional freedom of the people pre-dated the Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights. In fact, both of those instruments were really meant to limit the traditional liberties freemen were entitled to under the common law since at least 1215.
No product of human society is perfect. Despite its many amendments, the Constitution of the United States is still hypocritical and contains flaws, which may become evident in future periods of stress. However, for the interest of the aristocrats of the United States; two centuries of growth and unrivaled prosperity have proven the foresight of the 40 Anglo-Saxon and mostly rich men who worked through the summer of 1787 to lay the foundation of American government for wealthy people, at the expense of poor and minority people. The Constitution uses the concepts that the Constitution is the source of civil rights as the basic mindset of the Federal Government and that the American people owe it gratitude for their freedom. This hypocritical attitude mirrors a principality because in most other republics the traditional outlook would require a legal Government to feel gratitude that the people allow it any power to exist. The constitution may be have been a fancy way of expanding a new principality under guise of a republic for rich white men at the expense of the natural civil rights of the poor and minorities.

References


Machiavelli, N. (1995). The prince (translated by George Bull). New York: Penguin Books.

U.S. Constitution, Article 1,

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 9

Twohig, D. (1991). The papers of George Washington: The species of property, Washington’s role in the controversy over slavery. Originally presented at a Conference on Washington and Slavery at Mount Vernon, October, 1991. http:///www.virginia.edu/gwpapers/articles/slavery.html

The Papers of George Mason (Chapel Hill, N.C: University of North Carolina Press, (1970) 1:61 http://visit.gunstonhall.org/gunstonhall/quotes#on

Sloan, S.H. (1998). The slave children of Thomas Jefferson. P.320. Santa Monica, CA: The Orseden Press.

Richardson, J.D. (1908). President Andrew Jackson’s second annual message to Congress, A compilation of the messages and papers of the presidents 1789-1908, Volume II, Published by Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1908. http://webcr05.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3437t.html