The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery

In 1689, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government appeared in print. Written in part to dispute Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings and “to make good the title” of William of Orange as King by “consent of the people,” Locke argued that a sovereign’s power was neither preordained nor absolute (3). Quite the contrary, such power came only by way of a compact between the governed and the sovereign. In Locke’s view, all people originally lived in a state of nature in which everyone was accorded certain natural rights—namely life, liberty, and property. To protect those rights, they established systems of government and recognized hierarchical structures of social intercourse. However, when compromised, say for example by the actions of an unjust king, Locke believed tyranny prevailed. In that moment, the bonds of that compact were dissolved, but only by those who acquiesced to its authority: the governed.

In the Atlantic world, these ideas had a profound impact on British North America. In its day, Locke’s Two Treatises bemoaned King Charles’ abuse of power, calling Whiggish parliamentarians and reluctant sympathizers to action; signaling the Glorious Revolution ahead. Nearly a century later, they inspired another generation of rebels who also bemoaned the abuses of yet another English monarch, signaling the coming of yet another revolution. In Locke’s political theories regarding the bonds between the governed and the sovereign, colonial Americans discovered and forged their own sense of political consciousness. First, in 1776, when Thomas Jefferson and others used Locke’s Two Treatises as the palimpsest text for The Declaration of Independence; and second, in 1787, when the founding fathers established what would become the framework of our government. In The Slaveholding Republic, Don E. Fehrenbacher and Ward M. McAfee examines the history of this American compact and likewise its implication on post-Revolutionary America.

“CHATTEL SLAVERY in a nation explicitly dedicated to human freedom was a heritage both paradoxical and dangerous for the new United States of 1776. The domestic consequences of that heritage became the central theme of nineteenth-century America, as increasing sectional conflict led eventually to disunion . . .” (89). Long before the west was won and shortly after the dust from the War of Independence had begin to settle, America was torn about what to do about slaves and slavery. In Fehrenbacher’s account, the “sable” institution represented a formidable stumbling block, one in which the new republic grappled with for several generations.

From the very beginning, the North differed from the South. In both the New England and Middle colonies, slavery represented, at best, only a marginal part of society. The colder climes there prevented colonists from cultivating big agricultural systems that required large numbers of slaves. The South, however, was a different matter. There, the soil was more giving. In both the Chesapeake and in the Low Country, “two persons out of every five were slaves” (15). Not surprisingly, in this setting, conflict emerged, as the burgeoning republic struggled to define itself.

1776 marked the beginning. Indeed, with the penning of the Declaration of the Independence, the sectional crisis began. In his belief that slavery was antithetic to their cry for freedom, Thomas Jefferson denounced the institution and blamed the King of England for its introduction into the North American colonies. “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distance people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery.”

And yet, not everyone shared Jefferson’s view. Georgia and South Carolina, for one, demanded that the entire passage condemning slavery be excluded. Some northerners were equally sensitive on the matter. Either way, both had interest in the traffic of slaves. After the war, to be sure, “New England continued to provide most of the nation’s slave-trading ships, while Georgia and the Carolinas continued to receive most of the imported Africans” In this climate, the framers opted to preserve their delicate union. “Congress struck out the entire passage, thus leaving a document that exalted liberty and equality but said nothing about the presence of slavery in the new nation” (16).

Betwixt treason and certain death, “there can be little doubt that in the Continental Congress . . . antislavery sentiment was often muffled in the interest of nation unity” (18). But after the dust from the American Revolution began to settle, the subject of slavery again reared its ugly head. Accordingly, in the wake of Shays’ Rebellion, the Articles of Confederation proved to be ineffective. When redressing this, Southerners pushed their interest center stage and sectional tensions reemerged.

When the framers began to write what would become the Constitution, Fehrenbacher observed Southerners, under the auspices of the “Virginia Plan,” insisted that political power be determined by population and, further, that their slaves be considered as part of their population. In contrast, smaller states, most in the North, argued for the “New Jersey Plan”. In their view, each state should be represented equally. An intense debate ensued. In the end, the two sides were able to achieve a compromise: representation by population (which included slaves, i.e. the three-fifths rule) in the House, representation by states in the Senate. Southern planters were also successful in having other demands written into the Constitution. That is, without referring to “slaves” directly—the framers avoided it by using the ambiguous phrases “other persons” and “person held to labor”—the new Constitution included provisions that safeguarded Southern interest in the international slave trade and the return of fugitive slaves. While to most northerners, these concessions represented a contradiction in principles, the union had to be preserved. And so it was.

In the wake of this compromise, to form a more perfect union, yet another revolution loomed over the horizon. For sure, according to Fehrenbacher’s account, for the next several years, northerners and southerners struggled to define the Constitution’s relationship with the institution of slavery. For southerners, the matter was quite clear. The Constitution supported the presence of slavery. Northerners, however, believed otherwise. In that, the Missouri controversy, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act all represented milestones in the deepening sectional crisis. Despite its best effort to come to terms with its conflicting ideas of slavery and freedom and to prevent itself from being torn asunder, America failed. In 1860, civil war came and with it the end of slaveholding republic.

The only thing missing in this otherwise insightful account of the history of the Constitution of the United States is the social context that informed southern ideology. That is to say, had the author explored, perhaps briefly, the ways in which slavery shaped southern life, his account would have been rendered more nuanced, and therefore more reflective of the complexities of a slaveholding republic. Nevertheless, this is an excellent work of scholarship. It is a must read for students of American history. In particular, it is a useful companion for Pauline Maier’s American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence; together each of these works examine the two key texts that define the American compact: the Declaration and the Constitution.