Constitutional Convention Delegates

Long before the Constitutional Convention, slavery was a divisive issue in America. By 1787, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey had all abolished slavery. Some states, especially Maryland and Virginia, were willing to stop the importation of new slaves but did not want to abolish slavery altogether. Other states, especially Georgia and South Carolina, refused to prohibit either slavery or the slave trade. With such an array of opinions and beliefs, slavery threatened to play a blocking role in the debate over the Constitution.

As the selection of debates concerning slavery excerpted here suggests, slavery mattered most of all in terms of taxation and representation. The southern states wanted slaves to be counted in determining population (which was the basis of the number of seats each state would get in the House of...