Slavery & The Constitution: A Perspective

OUR HERITAGE UNDER CHALLENGE

Liberals increasingly love to criticize both our Constitution and the founding fathers as fatally flawed because slavery was legal and some of those founders even owned slaves. Similarly, women did not have the right to vote and that also makes us evil and suspect, they say, even though no other country in the world had universal suffrage at that time. Our Revolution led the entire world of that time in liberal, democratic ideas. You should realize, however, that our Revolution and Constitution could never have happened had not an unhappy but necessary compromise been arrived at by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. This compromise meant legally continuing slavery while confining it to the states where it already existed. This was the accommodation that made it possible to enlist the southern states into the revolutionary cause. Therefore, that we started off with this built in disgrace is true. Without that compromise, however, we would still be flying the Union Jack.
What is also not adequately credited to our founders and early leaders is that an epic political battle and bitter debate was continuously ongoing from that time and ended only with the Civil War. There were growing numbers of principled people who were demanding an end to slavery. This bitter issue eventually caused the founding of the modern Republican Party in the 1850’s as well as the nomination of Abraham Lincoln as its first presidential candidate in 1860. Then the disgraceful Dred Scott decision from the Supreme Court of that time was another happening that intensified anti-slavery emotions. That decision made it legal to take a slave from a slave state to a non-slave state and raised the obvious fear that it would actually enable the further growth of slavery into the non-slave states, contrary to the Constitution. This 6-3 decision also reinforced the stupidly cruel notion that blacks were not equal. The ensuing outrage proved to be the catalyst for Lincoln’s election and the Civil War that followed at the cost of 600,000 American lives from both sides.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, issued without clear legal authority in 1863, began the final freedom making process. Later, Constitutional amendments were adopted that embedded in that document for all time the equality of all men and, even later, of women. The 13th Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified quickly and became law on 12 Dec, 1865. It took until 18 Aug, 1920 for the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote to be ratified. No judge made the 13th happen and, in fact, no court in our history up to the Civil War had ruled against slavery. A judicial ruling aimed at redress, if successful, would likely have had the limited effect of establishing blacks as a victimized, exploited and protected class rather than solve the real problem of an unfulfilled Constitution. And in no way could such a ruling have resulted in the total effect needed. Happily, we did it the right way and, although the battle for equality took another hundred years to land on firm ground, it should now be rightly and loudly proclaimed that the free status of all Americans was clearly given greater dignity and meaning because of this successful struggle for Constitutional change. Many liberals and black activists continue to claim that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery. In doing so they unwittingly rob the American Revolution of its most glorious but bloody legacy. And, it can be fairly said, they rob blacks of a genuine reason to be among the proudest of Americans because they truly overcame.