Slavery and Constitutionalism

One of the major problems faced by Americans in the Revolutionary era was slavery, and they had made it a problem. Slavery had existed in the colonies for generations without substantial criticism until the Revolution. Abolishing slavery became one of the major reforms undertaken by the Revolutionaries. In the northern states they were reasonably successful, putting an end to slavery by 1804. Virginia was crucial, and there the effort failed. Virginians and others consoled themselves with the illusion that slavery was dying a natural death. But the desire of South Carolina and Georgia for twenty more years of slave importation should have exposed the illusions. The Deep South’s commitment to slavery required protective clauses in the new Constitution that eventually became sources of sectional division.