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Constitution of the United States
3 articles on Constitution of the United States
Constitution, U.S
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 10154 Includes: Proslavery Provisions of the Constitution | Implementing the Proslavery Constitution | Slaveholder's Constitution | Civil War Era | Reconstructing the Constitution | Failure of Constitutional Change, 1877–1895 | BibliographyThe U.S. Constitution, written in 1787, did not specifically mention slavery or race. Throughout the Constitutional Convention the delegates talked about “blacks,” “Negroes,” and “slaves,” but the final document avoided these terms because northerners made it clear that using these terms would undermine support for the new form of government among their constituents. As James Iredell, one of North Carolina's delegates, told his state's ratifying convention, “The word slave is not mentioned” because “the northern delegates, owing to their particular scruples on the subject of slavery, did not choose the word slave to be mentioned, the southerners at the Convention were willing to do without the word slave.” Despite the circumlocution, slavery was sanctioned throughout the ...
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Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
Word Count: 5780 Includes: From Plessy to World War I. | From World War I to World War II. | The Postwar Period to the Age of Equality. | A Revolution in Constitutional Thought. | Beyond the Civil Rights Movement. | BibliographyThe U.S. Constitution has been both a curse and a blessing to African Americans. Numerous clauses in the original Constitution directly affect blacks; although four amendments were added to protect black rights, they also protected the rights of other Americans. The specific language of these many constitutional provisions has been interpreted and implemented by the courts, the Congress, the executive branch, and the states. The original Constitution contained a series of clauses to protect the interest of masters in their slaves and prevent states from emancipating fugitive slaves. Although the proslavery Constitution of the antebellum period did not specifically regulate race relations, the overwhelming majority—95 percent in 1860— of all blacks in the nation were held as slaves. Moreover, in ...
Read full articleConstitution of the United States (Constitutional Convention, 1787–1788)
Word Count: 8229The Constitution of the United States was constructed as a living, breathing document to reflect the promises of a democratic government to its people and the hopes of the people for their new nation. For all its genius, however, the Constitution failed to address what would prove to be the most divisive issue in the history of the United States: the abolition of slavery.Slavery, in one form or another, had been present in the New World since the foundation of the first settlement in Jamestown and through America's fight for independence from Great Britain. The prosperity of the colonies was viewed as being married to the institution that exploited African labor and African bodies—business of slavery and the slave trade proved to be an extremely powerful financial and political operation. When the delegates to the Continental Convention met in 1787, ...
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