I HAVE WRITTEN about how, during the framing of the Constitution the issue of permitting the continuation of the importation of slaves was a major item of discussion. I have noted how during that discussion, from the only evidence we have, largely from the notes that James Madison took, Virginia tended to be OK with banning the further trade in those kidnapped and brutally transported from Africa because their slave population produced more slaves than the billionaire-class aristocrats of Virginia could employ, they made a profit off of selling slaves down river, as it would come to be known, to the more brutal slave labor locations in Georgia and South Carolina. Those two states delegates effectively blackmailed the original Constitutional convention to continue the importation of slaves into the United States as well as joining with the rest of the slave-power to impose some of the worst features on to the government of the United States, features still there and still favoring white supremacy and its never sufficiently mentioned killing cousin, wage slavery.
NOT that the Northern financier-lawyers were averse to giving Georgia and South Carolina their way. During the arguments which the proponents of continuing to allow the traffic in human lives during the framing and adoption of the Constitution, some of the most eminent of those delegates put it in the crudest of terms. None more amorally than one of the most eminent of the Northern lawyers among them, the Connecticut delegate, future member of the Congress, future Supreme Court Chief "justice" Oliver Ellsworth:
"As slaves multiply so fast in Virginia and Maryland that it is cheaper to raise than import them, whist in the sickly rice swamps foreign supplies are necessary, if we go no farther than is urged, we shall be unjust towards South Carolina and Georgia. Let us not inter-meddle. As population increases; poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless."
In other words, South Carolina and Georgia - especially the enormously profitable trade in growing rice - ended up with the slaves dying at higher rates, it would be "unjust" to not allow them to import slaves directly from Africa. More about which in a minute. I have noted that what the eminent Ellsworth was speaking in favor of was the direct equivalent of the slave-profiting industries of Nazi Germany which were not only permitted to work slaves to death, it was an intrinsic part of the thing. That American history doesn't notice that is only because the slaves used to death here were Black and the ones killed by Nazism where white.
Since the idiocy of the Broadway rap and boogie plaster saint Alexander Hamilton is a major hurdle in overcoming the fascist founders fetish that pervades the garbage that is American pop-kulcha "history" I have pointed out before that in encouraging the rigged adoption of the slave-power enhancing Constitution to the New York legislators Hamilton noted how much money there was to be made BY THEM in, among other things, the very rice that Ellsworth noted ended up with large numbers of slaves being worked to death.
It is the unfortunate situation of the Southern States to have a great part of their population, as well as property in blacks. The regulation complained of was one result of the spirit of accommodation which governed the Convention ; and without this indulgence, NO UNION COULD POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN FORMED. But. sir, considering some peculiar advantages which we derive from them, it is entirely JUST that they should be gratified. The Southern States posses certain staples --tobacco, rice, indigo, &c., – which must be capital objects in treaties of commerce with foreign nations ; and the advantage which they necessarily procure in these treaties will be felt throughout all the States.
Note that Ellsworth's statement included his expectation that, "As population increases; poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless." Something which, by the way, never happened until after the Civil War ended de jure slavery, though not slavery in reality, and not even then in reality. BUT ALSO NOTICE THAT IF ELLSWORTH'S FANTASY HAD BECOME REAL, WAGE SLAVES WOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONES WORKED TO DEATH. He certainly didn't propose anything that would make the labor practices of the rice barons of the American South less murderous, no doubt he'd have seen any effort to do that as an injustice. Someday I'll get around to a study of the issue of wage slavery during and after the period of active abolitionism in the United States.
I'll point out that I'm concentrating here on only the horrors and murderous loss of life during the time those stolen into slavery spent on ships because I'm concentrating on the founder and framers allowing that traffic to continue knowing full well about that loss of life. I think the two and a half million estimated to have died or directly been murdered in that passage is probably low and it doesn't count the enormous numbers killed in other aspects of the abduction, holding, transport and holding on the other side of the voyages and the enormous numbers used up rapidly in slave labor as the founders and framers were entirely aware of as they permitted all of it to continue.
But, continuing on, more needs to be said about what the fabled and fake framers were accepting when they allowed for the continuation of the importation of People, of Persons kidnapped, brutalized, transported and sold into slavery into the United States. They knew full well how large the loss of life was in just the middle-passage of the slave trade.
By the time of the American Revolution the enormous number of Africans who died during that transportation was well known TO THE FINANCIER CLASS OF AMERICANS. Here is just one account of that.
In 1748, the sloop Rhode Island, owned by the prominent Livingston family, left New York on a slave trade voyage. It arrived in West Africa on January 18, 1749, and over the next four months Captain Peter James acquired 120 men, women, and children along the AfricanRobert Livingston to Petrus Dewitt, July 29, 1749. By the time the vessel arrived back in New York in July 1749, "they buryed 37 Slaves & Since 3 more & 2 more likely to die." According to historian Philip Misevich, a loss of 32 percent of the captured people on a voyage was extremely high, and it was therefore most likely a financial disaster for the Livingstons.
(Click here for a report on the deaths among Africans on the Rhode Island.)
On July 29, Robert Livingston reported to Petrus Dewitt on several business dealings—including the loss incurred on the Rhode Island. Livingston’s callous description demonstrates the slave-trade investor’s emphasis on the financial loss rather than the human cost:
"We have thank God had the good fortune of haveing one of our Guinea Sloops come in, tho after along passage of 79 days in which time they buryed 37 Slaves & Since 3 more & 2 more likely to die which is an accident not to be helped, and which if had not happend we Should have made a Golden Voyage but as it is there will not be much left I fear, unless the other Sloop meets with better Luck."
Note that one of the Livingstons of that prominent New York family was Philip Livingston, whose professional activities included "merchant, politician and slave trader." It is quite possible that he was one of the financiers of that murderous ship voyage of enslavement. He was a delegate to both the first and second Continental Congresses and he was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. William Livingston, HIS SON, was one of those who drafted and approved of the Constitution, continuing with the long term practice of such northerners in directly benefiting, financially, from the most evil aspects of what they put into the document. The Dewitt family were of continuing relevance to the American financial and political class, as well, especially in and around New York. Dewitt Clinton's mother was one of them of the generation that financed that slave voyage.
And that is only the appalling death rate while, as John Woolman noted, slaves were packed in below ship "like herrings" for the long voyage, chained so they could not revolt and save their lives and freedom. He published that well before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin published his second essay "On The Keeping Of Negroes." So another framer and founder who doesn't have ignorance of the situation to fall back on.
By the time of the adoption of the Constitution the enormous loss of lives in just the middle-passage, the transportation of slaves from Africa to the slave-consumers in the islands, Europe and the Americas was very well known, if for no other reason than that so many of the framers and founders were directly invested in that trade AND THEY CONSIDERED THE DEATHS OF SLAVES TO BE A FINANCIAL COST TO THEM. I would love to see a list of the framers and founders who commented on the moral atrocity of it. And as investors, directly or through their families and associates, they would know that the numbers of deaths in just that part of the international slave trade were appalling.
And that was exactly what they authorized to continue until 1808 AND BEYOND IF THE CONGRESS, BY THAT TIME HAD NOT HAD THE MORAL WILL TO END AMERICA'S PART IN IT.
I will note here that it continued even after the Congress banned it with the highest figure in American Constitutional juris prudence letting off a pirate who illegally imported African slaves after doing so was made a capital crime. The putrid saint of American Constitutionalism both "originalism" and "textualism" as well as the lore of the legal profession, John Marshall, never saw hardly a single enslaver that he didn't support with his position as chief "justice." His decision in the infamous Antelope case of 1825 was pivotal in setting the course of the Court directly into what Roger Taney and his slave-approving majority would make the supreme law of the land, in fact what the goddamned Constitution was in the Dred Scott decision. I am sure it was part of what led the supposed anti-slavery "justice" Joseph Storey to write what was the most infamous pro-slavery decision before Dred Scott, the Prigg decision, no doubt on the basis of what Marshall had made as "settled Supreme Court" decision making by then.
The American founders and framers were no more moral than those who imposed and benefited from the Nazi's decision to work Jews and others to death in Nazi industries, they were the Krupps and Farbens, Siemens and Thyssens of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and their ilk is still governing us today. Ken Burns won't tell you that, no conventional historian or popular historian will tell you that because they know that the "free speech-press" regime under the "right to lie" won't tolerate anyone telling that truth. But it is the truth of the matter and the Constitution is still their instrument, made more so than ever in living experience under the Republican-fascists on the Roberts Court.
