September 1787

Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution required that any person 'held to Service or Labour' who escaped to another state must be 'delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.' It applied across all states, including free states, and obligated Northern states to participate in the return of freedom-seeking people. The clause was inserted at the insistence of Southern delegates and passed without recorded dissent. It nationalized the institution of slavery by making the entire country complicit in its enforcement.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution prohibited Congress from banning the international slave trade before 1808, a direct concession to South Carolina and Georgia. Charles Pinckney and Pierce Butler of South Carolina threatened to walk out if the trade was restricted. In the 20-year window, an estimated 170,000 additional Africans were forcibly imported into the United States. South Carolina alone re-opened its trade in 1803 and imported roughly 40,000 Africans in five years. The clause was also evidence that the Constitution was explicitly constructed to protect slavery.

The Constitution counts the enslaved as three-fifths of a person and protects the slave trade.