Excellent short piece on one of three discreet mentions of the peculiar institution in the Constitution

by oinsketta

Not being at home, where I have a short paper I once wrote about the three slimy and well-camouflaged Constitutional foundations for American slavery, the “Peculiar Institution”, I hit the internets to find the three discreet, coded, legally binding devil-in-the fucking-detail phrases. 

I found this one first, the timeless reference to “the Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit”; lucked on to this excellent one page discussion of the slave trade clause, well worth a read:

http://abolition.nypl.org/essays/us_constitution/3/

Glad to see there are some excellent teaching materials on-line.  My niece teaches American History in High School and I’m glad to see high quality discussions like these are easily accessible, with teaching notes.  Here’s another excellent short discussion (citing all three clauses) of one of the three legal foundations for the Peculiar Institution (I’ll leave the fucking 3/5 compromise — which apportioned representatives to Congress based on total population, including 3/5 of each slave, slaves comprising 40% of the population in the South — out of this post):

Fugitive Slave Clause — Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3
Essay by Matthew Spalding (pp. 275–276)
A model of circumlocution, the Fugitive Slave Clause comes the closest of the so called Slave Clauses (Article I, Section 2, Clause 3; Article I, Section 9, Clause 1; and Article V) to recognizing slavery as a protected institution. The Fugitive Slave Clause was one of the most controversial clauses in the Constitution because it provided that escaped slaves would be returned to those who claimed ownership. 
 
The Framers carefully drafted the clause to ensure that the Constitution did not give moral sanction to slavery. The final revision emphasized that slaves were held according to the laws of individual states and that slavery was not based on natural or common law. The language also implies that a slave owner’s property did not extend to federal territories if Congress chose to prohibit slavery there. Indeed, according to the legal requirements of the clause, an escaped slave was no longer a slave upon entering a state that did not recognize slavery under its law.
Unlike other clauses in Article IV, which vest power either in Congress directly or in the United States, this clause is written in the passive voice…

Click to access lesson-19.pdf

Matthew Spalding, author of the above, does an excellent job breaking down this “carefully drafted” clause, showing in very few words the complexities of political compromise I generally leave out of my morally indignant posts.  I frequently take a less nuanced route:

A “model of circumlocution”, “written in the passive voice”– this is how the fucking devil speaks and writes.  Just goes to show, once again, if showing again were needed (not to say it’s not): one needn’t be Hitler’s legal counsel to do excellent work, as a result of which, many millions are humiliated, maimed and killed.

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