Giovanni Cortez

Prof. David Plotke

Race & Citizenship

April 3rd, 2017

Midterm

Prompt 2: The U.S. Constitution does not use the terms ‘slave’ or ‘slavery’ though of
course both terms were very familiar to the framers. Why are those terms not present in
the document? In what ways did the widespread practice of racial slavery in North
America influence the Constitution?

The relationship between the U.S. Constitution and the institution of slavery was

heavily tangled and convoluted from the earliest point in which the Union began to form.

While the words “slave” and “slavery” are certainly never used in the document, the

ambiguous language pertaining to them, used to tip toe around the contentious institution,

tell a great deal about the intention to exclude the words. The transcripts of the

Constitutional Conventions reveal that the Framers discussed the extent to which “slaves”

and “slavery” would be considered in their drafting, though when it came to their

language on slavery, the document they created represented something that looked less

like the interest of a united nation and more like scheming compromises. The positions

that Northerners and Southerners both took surrounding the unspoken institution rendered

how they both saw said language aiding their plans for slavery in their respective futures

(i.e. North – abolition, South – maintenance). Both parties of the Union could agree that

the inclusion of “slavery” was not a gainful item to be written in to the Constitution,

though, again, for contrasting purposes.

For the North, the thinking was more long term: if they saw slavery soon to be

eradicated, it would serve little purpose to include the terms in the document. In fact,
inclusion would likely have created more problems than they would have come up

against otherwise. Aside from the fact that slavery was simply a moral contradiction to

their beliefs of equality, there was a fear that inclusion in the body of a document set to

become the very foundation of their society would bestow a degree of credence to the

institution of slavery. While their preferred usage of euphemisms did little to improve the

condition of unmentioned slaves, Northerners effectively denied slavery of any

constitutional legitimacy. In some ways, it was in their best interest to give the

impression that slavery remained legal while simultaneously making it that participating

Southerners could not use the seminal law of the Constitution to vindicate it; Hence,

slavery as something that is endured, but not endorsed by the Framers. In this way, there

is no indication to a completely unknowing reader of the Constitution that race-based

slavery was ever a part of America. Because the document works to not explicitly use the

word “slave” or specifically recognize “slavery”, it also does not establish any people as

property, making all the protections it proclaims eligible to anyone and everyone. It

seemed to be the way in which they could assure the Constitution’s durability into the

future and as Frederick Douglass confirmed, “Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a

sentence or syllable of the Constitution need to be altered.”

As for the South, what was equally as important for the terms to not be explicitly

included was for it to still be present in the form of euphemisms. The document is riddled

with “all other Persons” and/or “the import of Persons” in efforts to both make a safe play

at retaining the institution as well as improve the chances that Northerners accept their

values in a digestible manner. As much as the change in language could be accredited to

the North’s refusal to acknowledge slavery, one could argue that it was just as much due
to the efforts of Southern representatives designing the Constitution as something more

palatable to the North. During the Convention, it’s clear that the terms are avoided so not

to alienate nor provoke Northern collaborators. Though they were wrong to believe so,

the Southerners seemed willing to give up “slave” and “slavery” in the document because

they believed that doing so assured protection for the Slavery practice.

Regardless of it’s exclusion, widespread practice of racial slavery in North

America heavily influenced the Constitution, both in intention and language. This is

exemplified when looking at the two separate clauses that involve slaves and slavery: the

three-fifths clause and the slave trade clause. Here, almost exactly as the sides of the

North and South planned, one can see that the Framers’ intention was to write a

document that while neither prohibiting slavery nor authorizing it, looked to a future

where slavery would be gone completely or, at the very least, those who participated

were set to face some disadvantages.

There is the common misconception that the three-fifths clause asserted the claim

that slaves were property, and in fact less than human. What the clause actually did was

measure individuals by their wealth producing capacity, freeman or slave. The choice to

only count three-fifth of slaves in the population was not to say they were only part

human, but more so declare how much representation and taxation per state, i.e. the larger

the population, the more it could be taxed / represented. Again, the three-fifths fraction

estimated the wealth producing capacity of slaves. Slaves counted less in the population

because as slaves, bound as property to their owners, there were no ways they could have

the same opportunity to produce as a free man could. One could consider a free man

“whole” in the sense that his occupation is in his dominion, whereas a slave made up a
piece of a larger economic production. This clause revealed two things: a contradiction

on the side of the South who favored the clause for it allowed them some legislative

advantage, while preferring that slaves not be counted in taxation and evidence to the

inefficiency to slavery and slave labor. It indicated that slavery would either die out or

suffer from a lack of practicality, key to the future the Northerners saw for the Union and

essential to influencing the Constitution.

Though it is not called the “slave trade” clause, it is understood that Article I,

Section 9 overtly implies slavery and deals with importation and taxation on the

institution. Where it reads, “States now existing”, the Framers make a deliberate point to

clarify that the clause can only apply to the already established original thirteen colonies,

not to any states established after the document was written. New territories could not

participate in the slave trade. The clause also states that slavery “shall not be prohibited

by Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty

may be imposed on such Importations, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person,”

relating to how the document was written under a false sense of compromise. The

limitation on taxation seems to insinuate that slave owners are protected by the provision,

while simultaneously pointing to the slave trade’s vulnerability and in a sense confirmed

it’s abolition to come. They explicitly state a year in which it is no longer protected

which, along with limiting slavery to only the original colonies, established slavery as an

exception and not a rule. Overall, the influence of slavery in North America, and perhaps

its degree of inhumanity, shaped the language written to delineate how to make up the

social fabric of the future. It was a document that was no stranger to compromise of

course, but also certain that slavery was not forever.

Prompt 4: Across North and South America from the 16th century on, there were many
differences in how European powers dominated both the native populations and the
people who were forcibly brought from Africa to new colonies. In all cases, avowedly
Christian colonial powers struggled to reconcile universal religious (all God’s children)
and political themes with striking claims about who counted as human and who deserved
what rights. Without extensive new reading, consider one major case (for example,
racial slavery in the American South) and assess how the dominant group drew
conceptual and practical lines among humans, people, and citizens.

Without veering too far from the North and South American world, looking at

racial slavery in Puerto Rico is an effective site to assess how a dominant group drew

conceptual lines among human and people, creating a subordinate group. Slavery began

in Puerto Rico when Ponce de Léon and the Spaniards enslaved the indigenous Taino

people to work in gold minds and construct forts. As Friar Bartolomé de las Casas

documented, the treatment of the native people was severely inhumane and resulted in

widespread death and what some say was the end of the Taino people. Las Casas fought

for their freedom and eventually was able to secure their rights, but not before suggesting

the importation of people from Africa to replace the loss of the Spanish colonists labor

force. The Spanish Crown authorized in 1517, thereby beginning racialized slavery in the

island, something that become even more complicated with their assimilation and the

evolving status of the Taino.

Originally, the Spanish Crown had only permitted the importation of twelve

people per, but by 1555, the enslaved population reached 15,000. One way in which a

dominant group can draw a conceptual line to delineate members of the subordinate

group from them is distinguishing physical (as well as cultural) traits that the dominant

group holds in low regard. Aside from the fact that the slaves were already disadvantaged

simply on their darker skin, the colonists stamped the slaves on their forehead with a hot
iron, a branding that was meant to prevent their kidnap and represent their legal status on

the island. Another way is the one that more obviously refers to slaves, where the

dominant group allows less power over one’s life. The African people replaced the Taino

in the fields in Puerto Rico’s sugar and ginger industry. As Africans, they had no

opportunity for social progress, stuck as slaves bound to an owner and his land. What

differs about Puerto Rican slavery from American slavery is that families were in fact

allowed to live with their families in a small hut on their owner’s land, along with a patch

of land that they were given to grow vegetation. In this way, “less power” implies

something different than forcing people to work does; it is about removing someone’s

self-efficiency and independence. This play is more psychological as it poses to the

slaves, “why get my own when it’s given to me here?”

Another conceptual line drawn is that of culture and how the dominant group

removes and replaces the subordinate group’s culture with their own. Slaves masters in

Puerto Rico educated slaves in fact their own language (Spanish). What happens during

that process is that the subordinate is taught a version of education, moral, and culture

that is not their own. It also extends this same version of things to the younger

generations, as slaves would then education their own children in the new, dominant

language. They also are given the surname of their master, stripping them of their name,

but also any ancestral root or link pack to the past. Slaves in Puerto Rico, as well as the

rest of the Caribbean, included words or facets of their original languages of Africa

which define a big difference between Spanish spoke in the Caribbean than say Europe or

South America. Another erasure and replacement in culture was religious. Slaves were

converted to Christianity and baptized in the institution of the Catholic Church. As

essential as religion was to African people, some of it managed to survive though

covertly through the syncretization of Catholic figures to West African deities, thus

creating what is known as Santeria. The subordinate group is made to live their entire life

underground, clandestinely.

The final dimension I want to talk about when it comes to how the dominant

group successfully subordinates the people they see as less is ascribed status. The act of

placing people in a social hierarchy without their participation is said process further

divides anyone that isn’t seen as a part of the ‘dominant’. While the slaves were of course

still Black and so largely unrecognized, in Puerto Rico the Spaniards actually considered

them to be superior to the Taino. Once de las Casas successfully gained them their rights,

they were no longer forced to assimilate so to the colonists, the Taino was seen as weaker

and unnecessary to the society though the truth is not that slaves could assimilate, but that

they had little choice but to adapt their lives. Yet still, what this results in is something

that looks like “well we have it bad, but not as bad as them,” the process of continuously

other-ing a people to create an illusion of upheaval.

Prompt 6: Alexis de Tocqueville believed that democracy in America was not likely to
produce tyranny, although democracy often produced this result. What, in Tocqueville’s
view, made it possible for American democracy to avoid self-destruction? Does the Civil
War prove him wrong?

A big reason for Tocqueville’s view on America and American democracy had to

do with it’s past, or rather lack thereof in the eyes of Europeans. It was “special” because

the ability to completely disregard the Native societies meant that America essentially

had no past; it never had a monarchy or a church, or any establishment of classes.

Tocqueville’s belief that American democracy wouldn’t result in tyranny started with the

absence of these preexisting circumstances. The wealth of land that they continued to

unremorsefully settle made America ripe for classes to thrive where the largest was the

middle class. This was essential for Tocqueville. Though there were certainly some

extremes of both poverty and affluence amongst the White people, these were not large

enough groups to even consider them groups, as Tocqueville put it, “In that way there are

rich men, but they do not form a class.” He believed that as a result of the American

Revolution, democracy had allowed considerable power to those of the middle and lower

class producing a true sense of equality among the classes. America would not self-

destruct because when people were allowed to freely move up and down their societal

rankings, a complete contrast to Aristocracy, they are allowed an opportunity to

experience prosperity in facets of life, such as education, wealth, and culture, equally.

In a sense, the Civil War proves Tocqueville wrong, though he sort of prophesizes

it as well. He is wrong because there is a degree of romance to the social equality he

describes. It is true that class disparity is not nearly what it would become in the future,

but it’s also not hard to see how fragile the notion is. Tocqueville would have surely

considered the Civil War a social revolution and by the way he saw it happening: “If
America ever experiences great revolutions, they will be brought on by the presence of

Blacks on the soil of the United States.” The issue here is that he considers Blacks as on

the soil rather than it being their soil as well.