I had an idea or at least what passes for one in my musty old brain. I just finished Ratifying The Constitution, a collection of articles by different historians each discussing the ratification of a particular state with overview and editing by Michael Lienesch and Michael Allen Gillespie. I noticed none of these authors used the term “Great Compromise” and when I reached the eighth state to ratify it suddenly came to me.
The eighth state was South Carolina and Professor Robert M. Weir’s article is a frank discussion of the protection of slavery that state required from the new Constitution. It never occurred to me to wonder why if the question of congressional representation by population or by state was the toughest nut to crack and the Great Compromise was accomplished in July how come the federal convention didn’t wrap up for another 2 months. Obviously there was more to do. Another compromise to be reached. An accommodation with slavery.
Most Americans, even most southern whites at this time, agreed that slavery was evil. It was also very profitable and in the slave states considered essential to preventing a collapse of the economy. The South, Georgia and the Carolinas at least, would never join a union that could threaten their necessary evil. This wasn’t just a matter of a state having more or less political power within the new federal government though that became part of the bargain as well.
Eventually the deal was cut. The slave states would get additional representation in the House for their slaves with the Three Fifths Clause. The only authority granted the federal government by the Constitution touching slavery within the states was the Fugitive Slave Clause requiring free states to return runaway slaves to their owners. In exchange for this the commercial power, the authority to regulate trade by tax and treaty, was entrusted to a simple majority in Congress. The northern states would have a majority in both Houses of Congress and could enact a trade policy favoring the commercial states at the expense of the mostly agricultural South. One exception was won by the proslavery forces. The Atlantic slave trade was specifically protected for twenty years.
This slavery compromise was no less important to the success of the Constitution than the balance of representation between the large and small states in the new Congress. The slavery compromise was a more tangled web because it pitted not just political interests but also moral and economic considerations. In his notes from the federal convention James Madison reports that he himself, “contended that the States were divided into different interests not by their difference of size, but by other circumstances; the most material of which resulted partly from climate, but principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves.”
I asked myself why people would use a term that magnified one compromise and I had my revelation. It’s spin. It’s “The Great Compromise Myth” and it goes like this: The Framers went to Philly, rolled up their sleeves, and sat down to work out the Constitution. There were many ideas considered and solutions found but the convention remained stuck on the issue of representation. The large states wanted Congress to be apportioned according to population; the small states wanted each state to have the same number of Congressmen. The Framers ingeniously divided the Congress and gave equal representation for each state in the Senate and representation in the House of Representatives by population. The bargain was struck and the Constitution eventually finished.
This is how the story of the federal convention was taught to me in high school and I’ve read I’ve read more of the same since. A sanitized explanation keeping the hands of the Framers free of the taint of slavery. If I’m right then using the misleading ( if politically correct ) term “Great Compromise” is really irresponsible. Those of us that know better shouldn’t perpetuate ignorance. If I’m wrong I’m sure you spoilsports won’t hesitate to shoot me down in flames.
What are you saying, exactly? That the term “Great Compromise” is used to refer to one thing when it really refers to another? Or that the term is used disengenuously to refer to a compromise over slavery? Or what?
Although this is obvious OTP from you, I feel the need to ask: Got any proof that most Southern Whites considered Slavery evil? After all, many non-slave-owning Whites fought in a war in an attempt to preserve Slavery.
Monty,
I don’t have figures, but I know that a growing number of southerners were becoming opposed to slavery in the 1770s-80s. There were even proposals in Virginia, and even the US Congress, to adopt some sort of compensated gradual emancipation plan. I don’t know if it was ever a majority of southern whites, and public opinion shifted back towards slavery later on.
And, every history textbook I’ve read suggests that both the general issue of population being represented in congress and whether or not slaves should count in determining population were major issues. Most textbooks call the compromise made about slavery “the three-fifth’s compromise”, because it said that three-fifths of the slaves in a state would be counted to determine population for representation and taxation.
Captain: Well, I got the vast majority of my public school education in Dixie and what I gathered from that schooling was that the 3/5 compromise was so the South wouldn’t be as outrepresented in the House as they would’ve been otherwise. It had exactly zero to do with considering Blacks as honest-to-goodness human beings with rights and such back then.
The Great Debate here is: Should we use the term ‘The Great Compromise’?
I am arguing that we should avoid it as a distortion of history. The term, and the attached myth, marginalizes and conceals the compromise reached over slavery. We should not pass this ignorance along to others.
Monty,
OTP? I’m not familiar with that abbreviation.
Actually, I don’t have any proof and I could well be wrong about most southern whites at that time considering slavery wrong. I was relying on the paradigm of the hardening southern view of slavery from the Revolution to the Civil War. I don’t have any figures on the exact amounts in the late 1780’s but I do know that gradually over time the southern arguments became more forceful in defense of their “peculiar institution”. And yes, I can document that paradigm from the Story of American Freedom by Eric Foner and David Gremsted’s American Mobbing 1828-1861, Toward Civil War if you wish. The existence of the trend though does not show how a majority felt at any particular time.
This doesn’t affect my point that slavery presented a moral problem that was had to be dealt with in Philidelphia. Indeed, as Professor Weir points out, the convention was meeting in the State House, the very room where seven years before the Pennsylvania Assembly became the first legislature to ban black slavery.
So, let me see if understand this: you want to end the use of one accurate, relevant term, because another related concept doesn’t fit inside of it?
Pardon my non-French, but, “Huh?”
The Great Compromise was the more important part. I was taught about the 3/5ths Compromise as well, but the first hurdle was the issue of the form the government would take.
I’m afraid you will have to look harder if you want to follow along, smiling bandit. Obviously I don’t agree that the so called “Great Compromise” was more important than the slavery compromise. You would have a better change of understanding what I am saying if you shed some of the misconceptions you seem to have aquired somewhere along the way.
The compromise between the large and small states, which I will refer to along with the authors of Ratifying the Constitution as the Connecticut Compromise for the home state of its main architect: Roger Sherman, didn’t address the “issue of the form the government would take” as you have have asserted. It was strictly a matter of representation. The form of the government ( tripartite with a bicameral legislature ) was already agreed to. The thing being comromised upon was how representation would be decided.
That same question was part of the slavery compromise. Slave states would get to count 3/5 of their slaves toward their representation in the House. It also included other protections I have mentioned. The slavery compromise I am talking about is not simply the Three Fifths Clause. Instead as I have tried to make clear the deal was protection of slavery for the South in exchange for commercial authority for the North. This included the Fugitive Slave Clause and the 20 year protection of the slave trade.
From this I am arguing that the slavery compromise was more complex than the Connecticut Compromise. This is what I am basing my assertion that it had moral and economic dimensions and not just political considerations. This made it tougher to solve and I say that makes it just as important, if not more so, as the earlier compromise. I have also posted in evidence a quote from James Madison, who ought to know, that the states were divided “principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves.”
Oh, I agree with you there. The South wanted slaves counted for representation and not for taxation, and the north wanted it the other way around. Neither side was acting out of strong moral conviction, and pretty much everyone agreed on that.
2Sense, the Great Compromise has been called the Great Compromise long enough that I don’t think you’ll get the name changed now. Besides, you can argue that the “Great Compromise” was bigger, because it affected the actual structure of the government. The slavery compromises, while they were important in getting the Constitution ratified, didn’t deal so much with the actual structure of the government. We’ve abolished slavery, therefore making the 3/5ths law, the fugitive slave act, and the non-importation act moot, and the structure of the government hasn’t really changed. If we, for example, changed to a unicameral legislature, our government would become radically different.
To repeat: the Connecticut Compromise did NOT affect the structure of the government. The draft they were working from, The Virginia Plan called from the start for tripartite and bicameral government. It’s true that a competing proposal providing for an unicameral legislature ( The New Jersey Plan ) had been introduced on June 15th but was only considered briefly and then was tabled in favor of the Virginia Plan a few days later by a vote of 7-3-1. By the time the Connecticut Compromise was reached a month later this was a dead issue. The the structure of the government was decided; it was merely the details that were being hashed out.
As for the ex post facto argument, so what if slavery has been abolished? It hadn’t been abolished when the federal convention met and they had to find some way to accomodate it. When we discuss what happened back then we shouldn’t mislead people. The slavery compromise was at least as important as the Connecticut Compromise and we should avoid language that camouflages that fact.
Because the Virginia plan called for both houses of the legislature to be based on state population, and that the executive be chosen by the legislature:
The VA. plan still gave primacy to the large states. It’s true the NJ plan didn’t get popular support either, but that doesn’t mean that the VA plan by that point didn’t have opposition. The small states were very concerned about what they saw as a policy to virtually disenfranchise them in the legislature. The Ct. Compromise plan provided something the smaller states, if they didn’t like, could at least live with.
I’m not trying to make an ex post facto argument. I’m just saying that the slavery clauses in the constitution aren’t fundimental to government structure, as they were made inactive without the government structure having changed. The slavery clauses were important for ratification, and I don’t think anyone disagrees with that.
Also, you know most historians combine the Connecticutt plan and the slavery compromise together as the “Great Compromise”. The term is intended to include both.
I know no such thing and if true this deals a severe blow to my theory.
Got some cites?
And you aren’t following my arguments. I have placed no special emphasis upon the structure of the government under consideration. I don’t deem one item more important to this argument than another based on whether or not it dealt with structure. I am judging the compromises based on how they affected the outcome of the convention. I see the Connecticut Compromise as not dealing with the structure directly but merely modifying a small part of it ( representation in the legislative branch ). I see that as important because I agree that the convention couldn’t have succeded without this compromise. I feel the same way about the slavery compromise. What we are discussing here are explanations for the federal convention. If we were explaining the government it created then structure would be more important.
Well, this site, from the National Archive’s “A More Perfect Union”, and on the James Madison University site, includes the 3/5 compromise in “Great Compromise”:
And I think if you look at the Madison diaries from the 12th-19th, they were all voted on at the same time.
See, I think you’re misunderstanding me…I’m saying a lot of people call it the “Great Compromise” because it was the compromise that had the greatest effect on the governmental structure. Remember, also, the debate over the form the legislature should take lasted three months.