Constitutional Convention Protects Slave Trade Until 1808

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution prohibited Congress from banning the importation of enslaved people before 1808, at the insistence of South Carolina and Georgia delegates Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Pierce Butler. Pinckney argued openly that his state would not ratify without it. The clause allowed over 100,000 more Africans to be imported in the following two decades. Congress banned the trade in 1807, effective January 1, 1808 — the earliest constitutionally permitted date.