I am absolutely not. Slavery was practiced in the US in the same way that lynchings were often carried out or “practiced” in the US. With the indifference or even open support of the law, premised on the idea that the victims were a separate class of people not worthy of the law’s protections the same as a white man. Some states even went so far as to enact lynching into law, first subjecting victims-to-be to sham trials before racist juries. But calling it the law does not make it the law. Not when it is repugnant to the Constitution.
Slavery was called law, but it was never Constitutional. Unless (and I say again, unless) it can also be fairly argued that whites were themselves potentially subject to chattel slavery under the Constitution. Which indentured servitude is not.
Your posts started out as being a inchoate melange of word salad, but repudiating the plain facts of history about slavery is rapidly growing offensive. The Constitution explicitly references “free persons”. That’s all the refutation needed.
This is just true isn’t it? Before the 13th and 14th amendment individual rights, especially individual rights against encroachment by other people (i.e. not the government) were defined in a very limited and narrow way. White people really had no protections either.
I think ASL’s original point was just that if we assume that slavery/the right to own slaves was never constitutional in the first place, then Lincoln declaring slaves to be free wouldn’t require any specific authority.
Again–if you agree to the lexical constraints you build, which are clearly a matter of preference, and not a matter of fact. Quibbling about whether a society in which slaves are held throughout the country, but where “most people don’t personally own slaves” practices “widespread slavery”, is not a quibble I’m much interested in. How I choose to use the word “widespread”, I will describe such a society as having a widespread practice of slavery. Your alternate construction is fine if you want to die on that cross, but I hold that it is not how people commonly use words, and it certainly isn’t any sort of factual truism. It’s a personal opinion you are expressing about language use and has no authority beyond that.
I used the word as it is used in common usage, it is not my concern if your intended meaning did not match your written text.
ASL’s argument is devoid of any real relationship to history or the constitution. The constitution as ratified did not address whether slavery was legal or not, it didn’t address whether indentured servitude of whites was legal or not. Given the deliberate form of the constitution, a constitution of specifically enumerated powers and a few specific limits on those powers being explicitly stated, it is simply ahistorical nonsense to act like the original constitution forbade any legal practice at the State level unless you can demonstrate such with a specific linkage to constitutional text and practice from that time.
You won’t find any, because it was widely understood that the matter of whether it was legal or not legal to own slaves was a matter of State law, not Federal law. It was further spelled out that until 1808 there could be no law passed at the Federal level banning the importation of “persons” (aka slaves), but other than that and the 3/5ths compromise the constitution is basically silent on the matter. Given again, the constitution is one of limited powers for the Federal government, specifically enumerated, it is simply baffling to understand that the constitution prohibits a certain state law when the text of the constitution says no such thing.
The original constitution also was largely silent on individual rights entirely, as the Founders believed they followed from good government and didn’t need to be specifically enshrined. The Bill of Rights came due to political pressure, but that also was understood to apply only as a limiter to Federal, not State, action until after the Civil War.
Further, not only did the Founders countenance the idea of white Christian men being held in servitude, they would have been familiar with the practice–the concept of an indentured servant was well understood to them. Indentures had come to be seen as quite negative by the time of the Revolution, and most of the Colonies had passed laws limiting them in various ways, but they actually still existed as a concept for decades after independence–they didn’t really cease entirely until 1883 when a Federal law was passed forbidding imprisoning a person for failure to pay a debt. With that law in place, actually enforcing an indenture became more or less impossible so the practice rapidly died out. There were some people who probably still adhered to their existing contracts until they terminated, though.
The original US Constitution was very coy about slavery - so much so that the word ‘slave’ never appears. Instead, we get “Importation of Persons” and “3/5s of other persons” and similar work-arounds. This suggests that a significant number of the Framers didn’t like the idea of explicitly acknowledging slavery and that even those who were slave-owners sensed that it wasn’t popular to be explicit about it. The Article that prevented Congress from outlawing the slave trade for decades implies that certain Framers were concerned that the US might soon have a majority who did want to outlaw slave trade. But no matter how coy they were, the Constitution plainly allowed slavery - and over the next 80 years, slavery advocates got over their reluctance to talk openly about slavery, making a crime and sin into a matter of pride for a whole region of the country. Lincoln’s Proclamation takes the slavery advocates at their word: it’s perfectly legal to confiscate the property of rebels: if slaves are property then Lincoln had the legal right to free them.
The Constitution of the United States recognises slaves as property, and pledges the Federal Government to protect it. And Congress cannot exercise any more authority over property of that description than it may constitutionally exercise over property of any other kind.
Yes. That is exactly it. Because they were ignorant racists who did not realize a black man was the equal of a white man. Thank you for helping me to state my position so succinctly. The only caveat would be if the Constitution allowed for the enslavement of white people (even if only according to state laws).
Written by ignorant racists who shared the founders’ erroneous belief that a black man was not the equal of a white man.
This–ASL is making an assertion the original, 1788 constitution forbade slavery, he needs to cite clause and section forthwith or his position seems entirely farcical.
The same part that forbade the enslavement of white people. And if there is no such part, then there is no such part. But so far no one seems to want to argue that position. That said, if I had to make an argument that the Constitution forbade the enslavement of white people (and from here on out, just assume that when I refer to slavery and enslavement, I mean chattel slavery of the sort practiced against black people, whereby their descendants, too, were born into slavery), it would be the fifth amendment, or failing that it would be implicit in the continued force given to English common law even after independence.
Do you think that the Constitution countenanced the enslavement of white people? If you do, then fair enough, I’d need to convince you it didn’t, I suppose. But if you don’t… if we already agree… well, I guess first I’m curious to know if you think the Constitution would have permitted the enslavement of white people?
The Constitution contains no clause prohibiting slavery of white people. Presumably, the Founders saw no need for such a clause, because they considered it obvious. But even if there were, what then? Your argument seems to rest on two assumptions: First, that the Constitution prohibited white slavery, and second, that the Constitution made no distinction between whites and blacks, so that the prohibition on white slavery implies a prohibition on black slavery. But even aside from the factual matter of what the Constitution actually says, these two assumptions are inconsistent: If the Constitution did prohibit white slavery, then that would be a constitutional distinction between whites and blacks.
So you are admitting that nothing in the constitution forbade slavery–essentially that your entire original point was in error. Sounds like we have nothing in disagreement.
A simple factual point is the constitution does not forbid slavery in its original form of its 1788 ratification, or its amended form until the 1860s. This isn’t a statement with a clarifying “racial” component, it did not forbid slavery, period. White slavery in the form of being forced into an indenture to satisfy a debt or willingly entering into an indentured servitude contract was not uncommon in the 18th century when the Founders wrote the document (it became less common after, but still occurred into the 19th century.)
Additionally, people we would call white, could and were enslaved in the slave states–this happened when they were born into slavery from a slave mother. It is for this reason that States came up with the “one drop” concept, which essentially said you weren’t white if you had even one demonstrable non-white ancestor. It was the States that differentiated who could and could not be enslaved based on race, not the constitution.
Right. The Constitution neither forbade nor allowed slavery. It danced around it, and left it up to the states, many of whom specifically outlawed slavery. If the Constitution allowed slavery, then those states which outlawed it would have been in violation. But they were not.
Which was basically the same rationale used in Dred Scott when deciding that the descendants of slaves could not be citizens of any state ever under the Constitution. Because even though the Constitution said nothing of the sort, the Founders must have “considered it obvious” (or so went the Court’s reasoning). So… it sounds like we agree that the Founders considered it obvious that the Constitution did not countenance the enslavement of white people (and I’ve already said time and time again what I mean by enslavement, and what I don’t, so I’m going to stop responding to arguments like “What about indentured servitude?” as some people seem to keep trying to make as if it’s equivalent to chattel slavery as practiced on black people in the US). With that out of the way…
But even if there were, what then? Your argument seems to rest on two assumptions: First, that the Constitution prohibited white slavery, and second, that the Constitution made no distinction between whites and blacks, so that the prohibition on white slavery implies a prohibition on black slavery. But even aside from the factual matter of what the Constitution actually says, these two assumptions are inconsistent: If the Constitution did prohibit white slavery, then that would be a constitutional distinction between whites and blacks.
There is no constitutional distinction between whites and blacks, it’s just that a bunch of ignorant racists thought there was a factual distinction when they ratified the Constitution. So rather than asking “Did the founders intend to allow for the enslavement of black people?” I am instead trying to highlight the significance of that factual error by asking “Did the founders intend to allow for the enslavement of anyone equal to a white man?” I refuse to perpetuate and legitimate their gross factual error when they couldn’t even be bothered to write it down.