Historical Confusion

In light of Americans' general lack of knowledge when it comes to their own history, the Republican majority in the Ohio Senate put forward Senate Bill 165, which would amend the Ohio Revised Code to require that, between grades 4-12, students read and study the Declaration of Independence, the Northwest Ordinance, the U.S. Constitution with an emphasis on the Bill of Rights, and the Ohio Constitution.  This legislation passed the Senate and made its way through the House Education Committee and was put up for a full vote before the House on Tuesday this past week.  You would think that this legislation would have been completely unobjectionable and would have passed the House in a bipartisan fashion:  you would be wrong.

Objections from House Democrats ranged from the typical modern argument that "the Founders thought blacks were 3/5s of a person" to charges of Republicans hypocrisy because this legislation would effectively "mandate" that teachers teach certain curriculum.  The most typical charge that was voiced by most of the objecting representatives centered on the Founders' inability at the time to outlaw slavery.  In the proto-Kantian-historicist center of their argument, the objectors either openly or implicitly condemned the Founders for not being absolutists on the problem of slavery and throwing prudence aside.  You can watch the full video of the debate in the House here. 

This has to be one of the most ironic debates of all-time because the viewpoints expressed by the objecting representatives show exactly why this legislation is needed in the first place.

Here is Madison in the Federalist 54:

In being compelled to labor, not for himself, but for a master; in being vendible by one master to another master; and in being subject at all times to be restrained in his liberty and chastised in his body, by the capricious will of another—the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with those irrational animals which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected, on the other hand, in his life and in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others—the slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property. The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and it will not be denied that these are the proper criterion; because it is only under the pretext that the laws have transformed the Negroes into subjects of property that a place is disputed them in the computation of numbers; and it is admitted that if the laws were to restore the rights which have been taken away, the Negroes could no longer be refused an equal share of representation with the other inhabitants.

 And Hamilton:

The first thing objected to is that clause which allows a representation for three fifths of the negroes. Much has been said of the impropriety of representing men who have no will of their own. Whether this be reasoning or declamation, I will not presume to say. It is the unfortunate situation of the Southern States to have a great part of their population as well as property in blacks. The regulation complained of was one result of the spirit of accommodation which governed the convention; and without this indulgence no Union could possibly have been formed. But, sir, considering some peculiar advantages which we derive from them, it is entirely just that they should be gratified. The Southern States possess certain staples--tobacco, rice, indigo, etc.--which must be capital objects in treaties of commerce with foreign nations; and the advantage which they necessarily procure in these treaties will be felt throughout all the States. But the justice of this plan will appear in another view. The best writers on government have held that representation should be compounded of persons and property. This rule has been adopted, as far as it could be, in the Constitution of New York. It will, however, be by no means admitted that the slaves are considered altogether as property. They are men, though degraded to the condition of slavery. They are persons known to the municipal laws of the States which they inhabit, as well as to the laws of nature.

I could go on and on but I will finish with this concise and perfect summary offered up by Justice Clarence Thomas in a speech commemorating Harry Jaffa:

For, in the Founders' political judgment, only a union of all the states — even one tarnished by a compromise with slavery — offered the prospect of putting slavery on the course of ultimate extinction.

Without the national union, a confederation of the slave-holding states would have been likely — a confederation based not on the self-evident truth of human equality, but on that awful maxim followed throughout most of human history that it was acceptable for one man to rule another without the other's consent and to live off the sweat of that man's brow.

The South had their slaves anyway. What did the constitutional compromise with slavery accomplish, other than to tarnish the whole nation, rather than merely the southern part? Certainly, from the point of view of the slaves, it did not matter whether they were the slaves in a southern confederacy, proclaiming that slavery was a "positive good," or whether they were slaves in a national union that purported to be based on the equality of all men. In any case, they were slaves. Would it not, thus, have been better for the North to break away clean, to establish a government in the North that was pure in its devotion to the principle of equality?

That answer, too, called for the exercise of political judgment. The North had to ask itself: "What would be the likely result of such an endeavor?" One likely consequence was that neither North nor South would survive — that, once divided, they would prove no match for the European powers that still had envious eyes on the New World — and that all, not just a part, of the continent would be enslaved.

Another possible consequence was that the South would flourish, expanding the hated institution of slavery beyond its borders into the as yet largely unsettled lands beyond the Appalachians, threatening the free states of the North every step of the way. Only through a national union could these principles be avoided and the principles of liberty and equality articulated in the Declaration of Independence given a fighting chance for full vindication.

In other words, the Founders made the political judgment that, given the circumstances at the time, the best defense of the Declaration's principles and, ironically, the most beneficial course for the slaves themselves was to compromise with slavery while, at the same time, establishing a union that, at its root, was devoted to the principle of human equality.