HKB
in purchasing for themselves the advantage of a national regulation of commerce by this concession. It is the duty of History, however, to record the facts in their true relations.
At the time when the Convention for framing our Constitution was assembled, no nation had prohibited the African slave-trade. The English Quakers, following the example of their American brethren, had begun to move upon the subject, but it was not brought formally before Parliament until 1788; the trade was not abolished by act of Parliament until 1807, nor made a felony until 1810. Napoleon's decree of 1815 was the first French enactment against the traffic.
But in 1787, many of the members of the American Convention insisted that the power to put an end to this trade ought to be vested in the new government which they were endeavoring to form. But they found certain of the Southern States unwilling to deprive themselves of the supply of this species of labor for their new and yet unoccupied lands. Those States would not consent to a power of immediate prohibition, and they were extremely reluctant to yield even a power that might be used at a future period. They preferred to keep the whole subject in their own hands, and to determine for themselves when the importation should cease. The members of the Convention, therefore, who desired the abolition of this trade, found that, if they attempted to force these States to a concession that it ought to be immediately prohibited, either the regulation of commerce--the chief object for which the Convention had been called--could not be obtained for the new Constitution, or, if it were obtained, several of the Southern States would be excluded from the Union. The question, then, that presented itself to them was a great question of humanity and public policy, to be judged and decided upon all the circumstances that surrounded it.
Were they to form a Union that should include only those States willing to consent to an immediate prohibition of the slave-trade, and thus leave the rest of the States out of that Union, and independent of its power to restrain the importation of slaves? Were they to abandon the hope of forming a new Constitution for the thirteen States that had gone together through all the conflicts and trials and sacrifices of the Revolution, or were they to form such a government, and secure to it the power at some early period of putting an end to this traffic? If they were to do the latter,--if the cause of humanity demanded action upon this and all the other great objects dependent upon their decisions,--how could the commercial interests of the country be better used, than in the acquisition of a power to free its commerce from the stain and reproach of this inhuman traffic? By the arrangement which was to form one of the principal "compromises" of the Constitution, American commerce might achieve for itself the opportunity to do what no nation had yet done. By this arrangement, it might be implied in the fundamental law of the new government about to be created for the American people, that the abolition of the slave-trade was an object that ought to engage the attention of Christian states. Without it, the abolition of this trade could not be secured within any time or by any means capable of being foreseen or even conjectured.