slavery was one of those issues that always lurked in the background at the convention it is obviously an institution that uh early on in the history of the country created a lot of animosities a lot of deep feeling and concern even those who held slaves and some of the convention did including Madison recognized the immorality of the institution but you got to also recognize that for the South it was essential to the economy it's hard for us to even begin to understand that we tend to judge it by our own standards but you know slavery was one of those issues that the self built its economy on and so it was not easily dismissed even though it was recognized to be immoral by many it's pretty important to keep in mind when thinking about slavery at the Constitutional Convention that none of the delegates went to Philadelphia to deal with slavery they were there to build the government and they kept coming upon slavery it kept being relevant to the representation issue to the regulation of trade with the slave trade so they kept bumping into it and they would have much preferred never to have to talk about it uh and when they ran into it they suddenly found themselves on what James Madison identified quite accurately is the true fault line of American politics at the time between North and South between slave and free if you look at the Constitution itself the word never appears I think most of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention would have preferred if the issue were not there uh they didn't come there to discuss slavery they came there to create a nation and yet they found them M themselves as Americans still do today forced to consider it forced to discuss it forced to deal with it I like to describe slavery as our original American constitutional sin it was a complete contradiction of everything we stood for if you look at the soaring rhetoric that Jefferson wrote In the preamble to the Declaration of Independence you know all men are created equal that it's completely a contradiction and the founders knew this the founder even slave owners people like Madison people like Jefferson they knew it was a contradiction and they struggled their entire lives to deal with it there are a lot of people who consider slavery to be the original sin of the Constitution the problem that we have to recognize with slavery is that the institution itself likely was going nowhere just about every state had slaves when the Constitution was ratified some were moving in the direction of abolition but all of them had slaves so as a consequence the idea that slavery was going to be abolished in the Constitution was problematic I certainly wish it had been but it wasn't going to happen once we recognized that slavery was going to be a part of the new nation then the question was how do we deal with it different delegates had various visions of slavery even some of the delegates who were slave owners didn't much like slavery at least they professed not to like slavery very much but they recognized that it was a part of the American landscape and as a consequence they dealt with it as opposed to trying to fight to abolish it at that time there of course were some delegates who said that they really wished that slavery would would be abolished and and tried at least to to have those discussions those discussions didn't go very far there were many people at the convention I would say most the vast majority who were morally opposed to the institution of slavery but it was very clear that there would be no Union if they tried to abolish the institution in 1787 um and so what happened more uh than slavery disrupting the convention was that there was a tension between North and South all throughout the convention uh in terms of questions of representation and Taxation uh particularly because of the slavery issue part of the issue with slavery and some of the issues that the delegates had to deal with were purely economic those economic decisions drove uh their approaches the delegates approaches in some ways to the issue of slavery in those areas where folks believe that slavery was integral to the particular economy they protected it and they protected it fiercely in those areas where they believe that slavery was less important to the economy it was less likely to be protected a critical moment for slavery to really send the convention off the tracks came about about two-thirds of the way through the convention when the delegates had gone off on sort of summer break they'd taken 10 days off they'd left five delegates back as a special committee to prepare a draft they had adopted a bunch of resolutions about what the government should look like but they didn't have a draft Constitution these are men who knew what a draft Constitution looked like they didn't have one they needed one in the draft Constitution that was presented when they got back in early August had been dominated in its preparation by a fellow named John rutage from South Carolina who was a very effective delegate I think underappreciated for his impact on the Constitution and his mission was to defend slavery and the draft that they presented had extraordinary protections for slavery Congress could not adopt restrictions on Commerce by less than a two-thirds vote uh there was a guarantee of the slave trade forever and ever for the importation of slaves and there was a provision that that provision of the Constitution could never be changed so this slowly began to wrankle with the other delegates after a couple of days Governor Mars from he was from New York although he was a Pennsylvania delegate there got up and made what is sometimes called the first true abolitionist speech in American history and he denounced slavery which took some guts to do slavery was legal in 12 states only Massachusetts had prohibited it he called it a curse of Heaven that will curse the nation and he demanded a vote on the subject and the vote was all the delegates against him except Jonathan Dayton who was the youngest delegate from New Jersey even John Dickinson of Delaware who had freed his own slaves stood up and began expressing discomfort with this draft constit ution and its pro slavery Provisions that the rutage committee had produced and finally seeing that thing this was all going south on him R rutage said okay let's have a special committee and we'll we'll rethink this stuff and the slavery Provisions were uh ameliorated one of the questions that concerns Americans today is why the founders allowed the institution of Slavery to continue if you work through the convention and actually see what the arguments are you see that the uh Southern delegates especially from South Carolina North Carolina and Georgia would not have joined the union on any other terms because their constituents simply wouldn't allow it and it wasn't the case that they made the argument that slavery was defensible it was they felt many of them felt that slavery had been cast upon them and it was an evil although they called it a necessary evil the question is if the other delegates had abolished slavery how many slaves would actually have been freed you see the answer is none because the South where where the institution of slavery existed would not have joined that Union