Permission of the African Slave Trade. (Const., Art. 4, sec. 9.)

Luther Martin, speaking of this section, says, “The design of this clause is to prevent the general government from prohibiting the importation of slaves; but the same reasons which caused them to strike out the word ‘national,’ and not admit the word ‘stamps,’ influenced them here to guard against the word ‘slaves.’ They anxiously sought to avoid the admission of expressions which might be odious in the ears of Americans, although they were willing to admit into their system those things which the expressions signified.” * * *

“The Eastern States, notwithstanding their aversion to slavery, were very willing to indulge the Southern States, at least with a temporary liberty to prosecute the slave trade, provided the Southern States would in their turn gratify them, by laying no restriction on navigation acts.”

Mr. Madison says, “The Southern States would not have entered into the Union of America without the temporary permission of that trade.” Mr. Spaight, of North Carolina, one of the framers, says that the Southern States would not consent “to exclude the importation of slaves absolutely; that South Carolina and Georgia insisted on this clause as they were now in want of hands to cultivate their lands; that in the course of twenty years they would be fully supplied; that the trade would be abolished then, and that in the mean time some tax or duty might be laid on.” Hon. Rawlins Lowndes, of South Carolina, thought it almost inhuman to put any limit to the trade. General Charles C. Pinckney said, “By this settlement we have secured an unlimited importation of negroes for twenty years; nor is it declared that the importation shall be then stopped; it may be continued; we have a security that the general government can never emancipate them.”