It is well known that, at the time of the adoption of the Federal
Constitution, African servitude existed in all the States that were
parties to that compact, unless with the single exception of
Massachusetts, in which it had, perhaps, very recently ceased to exist.
The slaves, however, were numerous in the Southern, and very few in the
Northern, States. This diversity was occasioned by differences of
climate, soil, and industrial interests--not in any degree by moral
considerations, which at that period were not recognized, as an element
in the question. It was simply because negro labor was more profitable
in the South than in the North that the importation of negro slaves had
been, and continued to be, chiefly directed to the Southern ports.[1]
For the same reason slavery was abolished by the States of the Northern
section (though it existed in several of them for more than fifty years
after the adoption of the Constitution), while the importation of slaves
into the South continued to be carried on by Northern merchants and
Northern ships, without interference in the traffic from any quarter,
until it was prohibited by the spontaneous action of the Southern States
themselves.
The Constitution expressly forbade any interference by Congress with the
slave-trade--or, to use its own language, with the "migration or
importation of such persons" as any of the States should think proper to
admit--"prior to the year 1808.
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