The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 4 of 4

Name: The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 4 of 4
Author: American Anti-Slavery Society

American Anti-Slavery Society

Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals

The very first Article of the Constitution takes slavery at once
under its legislative protection, as a basis of representation in
the popular branch of the National Legislature. It regards slaves
under the description "of all other _persons_"--as of only
three-fifths of the value of free persons; thus to appearance
undervaluing them in comparison with freemen. But its dark and
involved phraseology seems intended to blind us to the consideration,
that those underrated slaves are merely a _basis_, not the _source_
of representation; that by the laws of all the States where they live,
they are regarded not as _persons_; but as _things_; that they are
not the _constituency_ of the representative, but his property; and
that the necessary effect of this provision of the Constitution is,
to take legislative power out of the hands of _men_, as such, and
give it to the mere possessors of goods and chattels. Fixing upon
thirty thousand persons, as the smallest number that shall send one
member into the House of Representatives, it protects slavery by
distributing legislative power in a free and in a slave State thus:
To a congressional district in South Carolina, containing fifty
thousand slaves, claimed as the property of five hundred whites, who
hold, on an average, one hundred apiece, it gives one Representative
in Congress; to a district in Massachusetts containing a population
of thirty thousand five hundred, one Representative is assigned. But
inasmuch as a slave is never permitted to vote, the fifty thousand
persons in a district in Carolina form no part of "the constituency;"
that is found only in the five hundred free persons. Five hundred
freemen of Carolina could send one Representative to Congress, while
it would take thirty thousand five hundred freemen of Massachusetts,
to do the same thing: that is, one slaveholder in Carolina is
clothed by the Constitution with the same political power and
influence in the Representatives Hall at Washington, as sixty
Massachusetts men like you and me, who "eat their bread in the sweat
of their own brows."

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 4 of 4American Anti-Slavery Society

Philosophy

The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 4 of 4

American Anti-Slavery Society

Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals

The very first Article of the Constitution takes slavery at once
under its legislative protection, as a basis of representation in
the popular branch of the National Legislature. It regards slaves
under the description "of all other _persons_"--as of only
three-fifths of the value of free persons; thus to appearance
undervaluing them in comparison with freemen. But its dark and
involved phraseology seems intended to blind us to the consideration,
that those underrated slaves are merely a _basis_, not the _source_
of representation; that by the laws of all the States where they live,
they are regarded not as _persons_; but as _things_; that they are
not the _constituency_ of the representative, but his property; and
that the necessary effect of this provision of the Constitution is,
to take legislative power out of the hands of _men_, as such, and
give it to the mere possessors of goods and chattels. Fixing upon
thirty thousand persons, as the smallest number that shall send one
member into the House of Representatives, it protects slavery by
distributing legislative power in a free and in a slave State thus:
To a congressional district in South Carolina, containing fifty
thousand slaves, claimed as the property of five hundred whites, who
hold, on an average, one hundred apiece, it gives one Representative
in Congress; to a district in Massachusetts containing a population
of thirty thousand five hundred, one Representative is assigned. But
inasmuch as a slave is never permitted to vote, the fifty thousand
persons in a district in Carolina form no part of "the constituency;"
that is found only in the five hundred free persons. Five hundred
freemen of Carolina could send one Representative to Congress, while
it would take thirty thousand five hundred freemen of Massachusetts,
to do the same thing: that is, one slaveholder in Carolina is
clothed by the Constitution with the same political power and
influence in the Representatives Hall at Washington, as sixty
Massachusetts men like you and me, who "eat their bread in the sweat
of their own brows."

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 4 of 4

The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 4 of 4

No reviews yet