Philadelphia
that the real difference of interests lay not between the large and small
states but between those within and without the slaveholding influence. The
opponents of the Constitution at the North censured it as a pro-slavery
instrument, while its advocates apologized for its pertinent clauses on the
ground that nothing more hostile to the institution could have been carried
and that if the Constitution were rejected there would be no prospect of
a federal stoppage of importations at any time. But at the South the
opposition, except in Maryland and Virginia where the continuance of the
African trade was deprecated, declared the slavery concessions inadequate,
while the champions of the Constitution maintained that the utmost
practicable advantages for their sectional interest had been achieved.
Among the many amendments to the Constitution proposed by the ratifying
conventions the only one dealing with any phase of slavery was offered,
strange to say, by Rhode Island, whose inhabitants had been and still
were so active in the African trade. It reads: "As a traffic tending to
establish and continue the slavery of the human species is disgraceful to
the cause of liberty and humanity, Congress shall as soon as may be promote
and establish such laws as may effectually prevent the importation of
slaves of every description."[24] The proposal seems to have received no
further attention at the time.

[Footnote 24: This was dated May 29, 1790. H.V. Ames, "Proposed Amendment
to the Constitution of the United States," in the American Historical
Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 208]

In the early sessions of Congress under the new Constitution most of the
few debates on slavery topics arose incidentally and ended without positive
action. The taxation of slave imports was proposed in 1789, but was never
enacted: sundry petitions of anti-slavery tenor, presented mostly by
Quakers, were given brief consideration in 1790 and again at the close
of the century but with no favorable results; and when, in 1797, a more
concrete issue was raised by memorials asking intervention on behalf of
some negroes whom Quakers had manumitted in North Carolina in disregard of
legal restraints and who had again been reduced to slavery, a committee
reported that the matter fell within the scope of judicial cognizance
alone, and the House dismissed the subject. For more than a decade, indeed,
the only legislation enacted by Congress concerned a