Slavery's Constitution From Revolution To Ratification Analysis

In September of 1850, United States President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act into law. It required runaway slaves residing in free states, once captured, must be returned to their masters. In defense of the legislature he wrote, “God knows I detest slavery but it is an existing evil, and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution.” Roughly sixty-one years after the ratification of the US constitution, President Fillmore believed the document legally guarded the institution of slavery. Historian David Waldstreicher, in his book Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification, concurred with Fillmore’s assessment, “In growing their government, the framers and their constituents created fundamental laws that sustained human bondage.” In the book, he laid forth several cogent arguments for the US Constitution being a pro-slavery document. He argued the document safe-guarded slavery through the three-fifths clause, the prolongation of the Atlantic slave trade, not allowing taxation on exports, and the fugitive slave clause. His analysis is accurate,

Waldstreicher:
Firstly, …show more content…
The slave trade was abolished by 1808, although, by this time they had no more need for slaves from across the Atlantic. South Carolina and Georgia had developed their own self-reproducing economy. One could argue this stipulation allowed the flourishing of the domestic slave system in the Deep South. By 1810, the South Carolina slave population had nearly doubled, from 107,094 thousand in 1790 to 196,365 thousand, and in Georgia enslaved inhabitants more than tripled, from 29,264 to 105,218. Statistically, “Overall, more slaves entered the United States between 1787 and 1808 than during any other period 20-year period in American history.” The growth slavery was clearly protected and encouraged in the Deep South by the provisions in the