Slavery: Presidents and the Constitution
Slavery:
At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates were concerned with the survival of the young nation. Many delegates called for strong protections for slavery, while many others hated the idea of putting into the Constitution the idea that there could be property in people. With the goal of forming a Union, they reached a compromise. Slave states would count 3/5ths of their slave populations towards their state populations to calculate taxation and representation in Congress. This is known as the 3/5 Compromise. Additionally, Congress could not outlaw the international slave trade until 1808. The debate over the federal government's power to regulate slavery continued through the Civil War.
James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson, who served as President of the United States in the years immediately before, during, and after the Civil War, each had different approaches to the constitutional powers of the President, if any, to interfere with the spread of slavery.
At the end of the Civil War, the Reconstruction Amendments, the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, and 15th Amendment, were added to the US Constitution. The three amendments abolished slavery, granted citizenship regardless of race, and allowed Black men the right to vote.
0:01 [Music] on March 4th 1857 outside the Capitol building in Washington DC Democrat James Buchanan took the oath of office he spoke of a landmarked decision soon to be handed
0:22 down by the Supreme Court on the issue of slavery whatever the Court ruled Buchanan said Americans must accept it as a final settlement of the controversy 2 Days Later the Supreme Court handed the South a complete Victory the Court ruled that Dread Scott
0:42 a Missouri slave whose Master had taken him into free territories could not thereby claim his freedom enslaved Africans could never be citizens the court insisted the most explosive part of the ruling declared that Congress could not ban slavery in any Western territory the
1:02 Court held that doing so would violate the property rights protected by the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution Northern anti-slavery forces roared in Anger both against the ruling and against the new president who had pre-end doed the decision they accused Buchanan of caving into the south on the moral issue of slavery and
1:24 even that he had Advanced knowledge of the ruling Buchanan had indeed been secretly ly tipped off by a friend on the court if Buchanan believed his approval of the Dread Scott decision and his hands-off approach to the spread of slavery would settle the controversy he was sorely
1:44 mistaken the president’s course divided the Democrats and fueled the new Republican party a northern organization dedicated to stopping the spread of slavery the rising star in the Republican party was a young senator from Illinois in 1860 Abraham Lincoln won the White House
2:08 in response to Lincoln’s election seven southern states seceded from the Union they created their own Nation the Confederate States of America while Buchanan argued that the president had no constitutional power to combat secession Lincoln believed otherwise Lincoln stretched the powers of the
2:30 presidency to his understanding of the Constitutional limits Lincoln always opposed slavery as immoral he believed it contradicted the Declaration of Independence and made a mockery of American founding principles he staunchly defended the right of African-Americans to enjoy the fruits of their own
2:51 labor Lincoln refused to back down from his opposition to the spread of slavery into the territories even when guns fired at PT SU he consulted with cabinet members and discussed extensively with other advisers after the Union victory in the Battle of antium in September he decided
3:11 to issue the Emancipation Proclamation it did not free all the slaves but it did change the meaning of the war emancipation soon became not just a war measure but a moral imperative Lincoln explained the North’s expanded War AIMS in his Gettysburg
3:32 Address 4 score and7 years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that Nation or
3:54 any Nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure with the defeat of the Confederacy at hand two problems remained for Lincoln he still had doubts about emancipation constitutionality and blacks remained in bondage in the slave states loyal to the
4:16 union both problems were solved by the 13th Amendment ending slavery which the president pushed through Congress in his second inaugural address Lincoln called the war God’s punishment on America for the sin of slavery with malice toward none with
4:36 charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds he was assassinated just Weeks [Music]
4:58 Later Andrew Johnson of Tennessee who had been vice president for only 6 weeks claimed he would follow in Lincoln’s footsteps but he actually went in a different direction Johnson had grown up a poor white Democrat from the mountains of East Tennessee he disliked Rich Planters
5:21 African-Americans and a strong federal government he believed blacks were intellectually inferior to whites he saw the poor FS of the South as the real victims of slavery believing that slave labor helped the rich stay rich and made it impossible for poor Farmers to have a better life Johnson opposed the 14th and 15th
5:45 amendments which granted citizenship and suffrage to African-Americans respectively he believed it was unconstitutional to ratify amendments when former Confederate States had no representation in Congress Johnson used The veto to block the fredman’s bureau and other
6:05 reconstruction measures the Republicans impeached him but the conviction fell one vote short of the 2/3 majority required to remove him from Office owing partly to Johnson’s encouragement the South resisted any degree of black equality reconstruction thus became a
6:27 sad chapter in American history in which African-Americans of the South briefly attained rights only to see them swept away until the Civil Rights Movement nearly 100 years later