The Founders and the Interstate Slave Trade

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During the antebellum decades of the nineteenth century, opponents of slavery often argued that the federal government possessed the constitutional power outlaw the interstate slave trade. Such prominent politicians as John Jay, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, Salmon P. Chase, and Charles Sumner all asserted at one time or another that possessed the requisite authority. At its founding 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society declared, Congress has a right, and is solemnly bound, suppress the domestic slave trade between the several States. By 1838 the abolitionists had presented the U. S. House of Representatives with petitions signed by more than 23,000 people calling for a federal ban on interstate slave trafficking. spurned the abolitionist appeals, declaring that it had no right do that indirectly which it cannot do directly and therefore any effort to prohibit the removal of slaves from State was in violation of the Constitution, destructive of the fundamental principle on which the Union of these states rests, and beyond the jurisdiction of Congress. Defenders of slavery remained worried, nevertheless, that if the North ever came dominate the federal government, it might move against the slave trade. Although the issue of slavery the territories was paramount during the climactic sectional conflict of the 1850s, the fundamental reason that slaveholders demanded more slave territory, and thus ultimately more slave states, was that they feared for the political security of slavery within the Union, and the threat the interstate slave trade was a major cause of that anxiety. During the 1860 election campaign and the secession crisis that followed, debate raged the South as the intentions of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. The refusal of the Republicans accept the Washington Peace Conference proposals, which included an amendment the Constitution prohibiting from ever interfering with the movement of slaves across state lines, was the last link the chain of events that culminated the outbreak of civil war. Given the role that the interstate slave trade issue played bringing on national catastrophe, the question that stirred so much controversy the antebellum period is still worth asking: Did the nation's founders intend give the power, under the Constitution, abolish the interstate slave trade?1 When representatives of the several states met at Philadelphia 1787 construct a more perfect union, they agreed that the new government should have the power regulate commerce. They disagreed, however, on the details. New Englanders, heavily involved the carrying trade and eager for regulations that would benefit their mercantile and shipping interests, wanted the federal commerce power be broadly defined and easily wielded. Southerners, dependent upon their cash crops of tobacco, rice, and indigo, wanted export taxes prohibited altogether and a two-thirds majority of required for the adoption of other commercial legislation. In addition, the two southernmost states, South Carolina and Georgia, sought protect from federal interference their right import African slaves. Many delegates from the other states, even other southern states, viewed the continued importation of captive Africans as an embarrassment a nation that had justified its birth on the noble theory that all men are created with an inalienable right liberty. But the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia insisted that their states needed more slaves. If the new constitution banned the importation of Africans, they said, then their states would never accept it. When Luther Martin of Maryland protested that allowing the importation of slaves was inconsistent with the principles of the revolution and dishonorable the American character, John Rutledge of South Carolina replied that Religion & humanity had nothing do with this question-Interest alone is the governing principle with Nations-The true question at present is whether the Southn. …