Federalism and the Clarification of Slavery | Dr. Nicholas Cole | BRI’s Constitutional Conversations

0:00 and what do you think were some of the great successes or failures or missions specifically of the American Constitution formation well the the really interesting success that they have that nobody had thought

0:21 about or properly theorized before they started their work was the idea of meaningfully dividing sovereignty between a national government and state governments even Madison comes to the convention famously with these notes on ancient and modern confederacies in his

0:43 pocket believing that for a confederacy to be successful the the national government must be properly sovereign in the sense of being able to have the final say over what is and is not good enough or is or is not appropriate for the Union and there was no European theorists for

1:04 divided sovereignty that they could quote this is something that they work out through a process of debate and and working out what will and will not be acceptable to the different states that’s an incredible thing to have achieved as a group and it needs a lot

1:26 of theoretical working out after the convention is over and and in a way American theorists are still working out exactly what that means and sometimes those debates have not always gone very well in American history but fundamentally that is one of the achievements of the convention is to

1:46 invent this this this new kind of Union that is neither really a confederation of states nor is it a sovereign national government ruling over local authorities and and nobody thought before the convention that that kind of thing was possible so that that is a real

2:07 achievement I think one of the things as well the I’m I’m grateful for as I look at the text there’s one of the very very final amendments that is made to the text of the Constitution on the penultimate day really when they’re just looking at the

2:28 final text is a is a clarification that nobody is enslaved by federal law and they they make a very small clarification to the text to make it very clear that the anybody who is enslaved is enslaved by by state law not

2:50 by federal law and I I’m glad that that clarification was made I think the Constitution is sometimes condemned now for having made too many compromises with slave-owning States and I think a fair reading of the record shows that the convention didn’t really have the

3:12 freedom to debate the morality of slavery although many members of the convention did bring it up during the debates but it wasn’t really a question of whether the convention would adopt slavery as a system for America or would or would rule it out they were dealing

3:33 with the fact that many states allowed for slavery some states didn’t and how do you form a union based on such different principles and although they did make many many compromises with slave holding States to reassure them

3:54 that the national government wouldn’t be a vehicle for abolition and perhaps we can we can debate whether they went too far or not I’m just very grateful that at the end of the convention they really do clarify that position that it is it is state law that they’re recognizing I think their fundamental compromise that

4:18 really shows itself in the electoral college concerns the question of what weight should be given to the opinions of different voters in different parts of the Union and I think they they they find a compromise on that issue that

4:39 comes out in in different parts of the text where they they don’t say America is simply going to be governed by a kind of majority rule and I think that’s very important for a nation that is as diverse as the United States is and and and remains