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Slavery and Freedom in American State Constitutional Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2015

Paul E. Herron
Paul E. Herron*
Affiliation:
Clark University
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 301 - 336
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Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Richard Bensel, Amy Bridges, John Dinan, Anne Marie Helm, Ken Kersch, Dan Kryder, Ryan LaRochelle, Alan Tarr, and the anonymous referees at the Journal of Policy History for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article.

References

NOTES

1. Morgan, Edmund S., “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” Journal of American History 59, no. 1 (June 1972): 5–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975).

2. Morgan, , “Slavery and Freedom,” 10–14, 21–28Google Scholar.

3. Ibid., 28.

4. Modern historians, including Kathleen Brown and Anthony Parent Jr., continue to grapple with and expand on Morgan’s thesis. Brown, Kathleen M., Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1996)Google Scholar; Parent, Anthony S. Jr., Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660–1740 (Chapel Hill, 2003)Google Scholar. For work countering Morgan’s thesis, see Bradburn, Douglas and Coombs, John C., eds., Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion (Charlottesville, 2011).Google Scholar

5. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom,” 24.

6. Keyssar, Alexander, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, 2000), 54–57Google Scholar; Scalia, Laura J., America’s Jeffersonian Experiment: Remaking State Constitutions, 1820–1850 (Dekalb, 1999), 58–59Google Scholar; Alan Tarr, G., Understanding State Constitutions (Princeton, 1998), 106Google Scholar; Smith, Rogers M., Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 170–73Google Scholar; Smith argues a “multiple traditions thesis,” which recognizes the coexistence of liberal, democratic republican, and inegalitarian civic ideologies that blend to reflect the popular will; he finds that in many cases these seemingly contradictory ideological combinations have worked to legitimize racial injustice, even during periods of broader democratization.

7. Wolf, Eva Sheppard, Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion (Baton Rouge, 1982), 39Google Scholar. Thomas Jefferson even supported a bill to allow private manumission of slaves early in his career; he later drafted a constitution for Virginia that would provide for gradual emancipation (no convention was ever called, and Jefferson never took any great strides toward actually ending the institution). His words of freedom never overcame his interests as a slaveholding planter. See Finkelman, Paul, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (Armonk, N.Y., 2001), 137–62.Google Scholar

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11. Ibid., 301–4.

12. Fehrenbacher, Don E., Sectional Crisis and Southern Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge, 1989), 109.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., 109, 80. Kermit Hall and James Ely Jr. do argue, “A distinctive southern constitutional position emerged during the antebellum era.” And William Wiecek’s essay in the same volume, “‘Old Times There are not Forgotten’: The Distinctiveness of the Southern Constitutional Experience,” also acknowledges southern exceptionalism. But like so much of the literature on American constitutionalism, all three authors are referencing arguments about national constitutional authority. There is a dearth of analysis on state constitutional development and even less on southern state constitutional development. See Hall, Kermit L. and Ely, James W., eds., An Uncertain Tradition: Constitutionalism and the History of the South (Athens, 1989), 103, 159–97.Google Scholar

14. Dinan, John, The American State Constitutional Tradition (Lawrence, Kans., 2006), 37–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Einhorn, Robin L., American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago, 2006), 1–79.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., 7.

17. Ibid., 202–9.

18. For an in-depth analysis of slavery and the law, see Morris, Thomas D., Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 (Chapel Hill, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Robertson, David Brian, The Constitution and America’s Destiny (New York, 2005), 28.Google Scholar

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22. See Beard, Charles, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1913).Google Scholar

23. See Table 1, “Slavery in All State Constitutions.” The table displays all slavery provisions in American state constitutions.

24. Freehling, William W., The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War (New York, 2001), 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. South Carolina Constitution of 1776, preamble.

26. North Carolina Constitution of 1776; in Maryland, the authors claimed: “The doctrine of non-resistance, against arbitrary power and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.” Maryland Constitution of 1776, declaration of rights, IV.

27. Vermont Constitution of 1777, chap. 1, sec. 1: “THAT all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. Therefore, no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one Years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent, after they arrive to such age, or bound by law, for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.” Delaware Constitution of 1776, article 26.

28. Pennsylvania’s first constitution said, “The inhabitants of this commonwealth have in consideration of protection only, heretofore acknowledged allegiance to the king of Great Britain; and the said king has not only withdrawn that protection, but commenced, and still continues to carry on, with unabated vengeance, a most cruel and unjust war against them, employing therein, not only the troops of Great Britain, but foreign mercenaries, savages and slaves, for the avowed purpose of reducing them to a total and abject submission to the despotic domination of the British parliament.” Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, preamble. Vermont’s preamble contained similar language.

29. Robertson, , The Constitution and America’s Destiny, 38Google Scholar.

30. Finkelman, , Slavery and the Founders, 7–10Google Scholar.

31. Graber, Mark A., Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (New York, 2006), 92; Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders, 112.Google Scholar

32. William Lloyd Garrison to Rev. Samuel J. May, 17 May 1845, in The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, ed. Walter M. Merrill (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 3:303, quoted in Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders, 3; see also Amar, Akhil Reed, America’s Constitution: A Biography (New York, 2005), 20Google Scholar; Amar writes: “Slavery was the original sin in the New World garden, and the Constitution did more to feed the serpent than to crush it.”

33. Tarr, , Understanding State Constitutions, 66Google Scholar.

34. Einhorn, , American Taxation, American Slavery, 79–109Google Scholar.

35. The states south of Delaware all used the county as the primary unit of government, and those to the north used towns; Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery, 81; see also Saye, 1948 Saye, Albert B., A Constitutional History of Georgia, 1732–1945 (Athens, 1948), 104–5.Google Scholar

36. Einhorn, , American Taxation, American Slavery, 202, 208–11Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., 231.

38. Branning, Rosalind, Pennsylvania Constitutional Development (Pittsburgh, 1960), 3–25Google Scholar. Pennsylvania had a progressive constitution from the beginning.

39. Wood, Gordon, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (New York, 1969), 132–38.Google Scholar

40. By midcentury, delegates had access to pamphlets containing state constitutions from across the nation; Dinan, , The American State Constitutional Tradition, 14–16Google Scholar; Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions, 98.

41. Scalia, America’s Jeffersonian Experiment, 49–75; Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions, 105.

42. Tarr, , Understanding State Constitutions, 121Google Scholar.

43. Ibid., 106.

44. Einhorn, , American Taxation, American Slavery, 79–86Google Scholar.

45. Scalia, , America’s Jeffersonian Experiment, 62–63Google Scholar.

46. Dinan, , The American State Constitutional Tradition, 32–34Google Scholar.

47. Ibid., 30–37; Scalia, America’s Jeffersonian Experiment, 62–63; Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions, 94–112.

48. Green, Constitutional Development in the South Atlantic States, 297.

49. Howe, , What God Hath Wrought, 4Google Scholar.

50. Dinan, , The American State Constitutional Tradition, 38Google Scholar.

51. Coward, Joan Wells, Kentucky in the New Republic, the Process of Constitution Making (Lexington, 1979), 17Google Scholar.

52. Coward, , Kentucky in the New Republic, 41Google Scholar.

53. See Table 1, “Slavery in All State Constitutions.”

54. Coward, , Kentucky in the New Republic, 26Google Scholar.

55. Kentucky Constitution of 1792, art. I, sec. 5; art. VI, sec. 1.

56. Kentucky Constitution of 1792, art. I, sec. 10, 11; art. II, sec. 2.

57. Coward, , Kentucky in the New Republic, 31Google Scholar.

58. Georgia Constitution of 1798, art. I, sec. 7. “Black belts” are regions characterized by both dark, rich soil and the large presence of African Americans; they were controlled by a minority of rich white planters. See Cobb, James, The Most Southern Place on Earth (Oxford, 1992), 5–6Google Scholar; Freehling, The South vs. The South, 19; V. O. Key Jr., Southern Politics in State and Nation (Knoxville, 1949), 3–6.

59. Georgia Constitution of 1798, art. IV “Voting, Rights of Citizens, Miscellaneous,” sec. 11.

60. Georgia Constitution of 1798, art. IV, sec. 12.

61. Mississippi Constitution of 1817, art. VII; Alabama Constitution of 1819, Art, IX; Missouri Constitution of 1820, art. III, sec. 27; Arkansas Constitution of 1836, art. IV, sec. 25; Texas Constitution of 1845, art. VIII.

62. Ford, Lacy K., Deliver Us from Evil, The Slavery Question in the Old South (New York, 2009), 143–45Google Scholar.

63. Georgia Constitution of 1798, art. IV, sec. 1; limiting electors to those who paid taxes “that may be required of them;” Georgia Constitution of 1798, art. I, sec. 4 and 8; Saye, Albert B., A Constitutional History of Georgia, 1732–1945 (Athens, 1948), 162–64.Google Scholar

64. Saye, A Constitutional History of Georgia, 164.

65. Ware, Ethel Kime, A Constitutional History of Georgia (New York, 1947), 80Google Scholar.

66. Winbourne Magruder Drake, “Constitutional Development in Mississippi, 1817–1865” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1954), 103.

67. Drake, Winbourne Magruder, “The Framing of Mississippi’s First Constitution,” Journal of Mississippi History 29, no. 4 (November 1967): 307Google Scholar; Hatcher, William H., “Mississippi Constitutions,” in Politics in Mississippi, ed. Parker, Joseph B. (Salem, 2001), 35; Mississippi Constitution of 1817, Art IX, “Slaves.”Google Scholar

68. David G. Sansing, “Mississippi’s Four Constitutions,” 56 Miss. L.J. 3, 1986,” 6.

69. Ibid.; Howerton, H. B., “Mississippi’s Constitutional History,” in Yesterday’s Constitution Today, ed. Hobbs, Edward H. (Oxford, 1960), 5.Google Scholar

70. Mississippi Constitution of 1817, art. III, sec. 9, 10.

71. Howerton, “Mississippi’s Constitutional History,” 5.

72. Rothman, Joshua D., Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson (Athens, 2012), 10.Google Scholar

73. Ibid.

74. Drake, Winbourne Magruder, “The Mississippi Convention of 1832,” Journal of Southern History 23, no. 2 (August 1957): 359–65.Google Scholar

75. Ibid., 366; Drake, “Constitutional Development in Mississippi, 1817–1865,” 178–88.

76. Rothman, Flush Times and Fever Dreams, 12.

77. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 455–58. The state legislature even passed a tax on the supposedly illegal slave trade, indicating a complete lack of enforcement.

78. McMillan, Malcolm C., Constitutional Development in Alabama, 1798–1901: A Study in Politics, the Negro, and Sectionalism (Chapel Hill, 1955), 31.Google Scholar

79. Ibid., 34.

80. Ibid., 44.

81. Alabama Constitution of 1819, art. V.

82. McMillan, , Constitutional Development in Alabama, 42Google Scholar.

83. Mills Thornton, J., Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800–1860 (Baton Rouge, 1978), 12.Google Scholar

84. Ibid., 20.

85. Freehling, William W., The Road to Disunion, Vol. I, Secessionists at Bay (New York, 1990), 147.Google Scholar

86. Missouri Constitution of 1820, art. III, sec. 26; Loeb, Isidor, Constitutions and Constitutional Conventions in Missouri (Columbia, 1920), 7–11Google Scholar.

87. Carter, Clarence Edwin, The Territorial Papers of the United States; Vol. IV: The Territory South of the River Ohio, 1790–1796 (Washington, D.C., 1936).Google Scholar

88. Laska, Lewis L., The Tennessee State Constitution, a Reference Guide (Westport, Conn., 1990), 3–5.Google Scholar

89. McClure, Walter Mitchell, State Constitution-Making, with Especial Reference to Tennessee (Nashville, 1916), 53.Google Scholar

90. Tennessee Constitution of 1835, art. I; art. II; art. IV, sec. 1.

91. Laska, , The Tennessee State Constitution, 3Google Scholar.

92. Ibid., 8.

93. Einhorn, , American Taxation, American Slavery, 240Google Scholar.

94. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 395.

95. Caldwell, Joshua W., Studies in the Constitutional History of Tennessee (Cincinnati, 1896), 134–35.Google Scholar

96. Ibid.

97. Journal of the Convention of the State of Tennessee Convened for the Revision and Amendment of the Constitution thereof (Nashville, 1834), 88–93.

98. Ibid., 92.

99. Tennessee Constitution of 1834, art. II, sec. 31.

100. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 410.

101. Ibid., 417.

102. On the vote: Arkansas Constitution of 1836, art. III, sec. 5; Florida Constitution of 1839, art. VI, sec. 1; on slavery: Arkansas Constitution of 1836, art. IX; Florida Constitution of 1839, art. XVI, sec. 1, 2.

103. Goss, Kay C., The Arkansas State Constitution (New York, 2011), 6.Google Scholar

104. Alemberte, Talbot D’, The Florida State Constitution (New York, 2011), 5.Google Scholar

105. Ibid., 6.

106. Moussalli, Stephanie D., “Florida’s Frontier Constitution: The Statehood, Banking, and Slavery Controversies,” Florida Historical Quarterly 74, no. 4 (Spring 1996): 432.Google Scholar

107. Ibid., 433; Florida Constitution of 1839, art. IX, sec. 1.

108. Debates are available from Texas in 1845, Louisiana in 1845, Virginia in 1829–30 and 1850–51, North Carolina in 1835, Delaware in 1831 and 1853, and Maryland in 1850–51; see Dinan, The American State Constitutional Tradition, 27.

109. Debates of the 1845 Texas Convention (Houston, 1846), 217.

110. Scalia, America’s Jeffersonian Experiment, 62.

111. See Alabama Constitution of 1819, art. III, sec. 8; Tennessee Constitution of 1796, 1835; Louisiana Constitution of 1812, 1845, 1852, 1861; Arkansas Constitution of 1836, 1861; Texas Constitution of 1845, 1861; Michigan Constitution of 1835; Iowa Constitution of 1846, 1857; California Constitution of 1849; Minnesota Constitution of 1857; Oregon Constitution of 1857; Kansas Constitution of 1859; and West Virginia Constitution of 1863.

112. Debates of the 1845 Texas Convention, 205.

113. Dinan, , The American State Constitutional Tradition, 32Google Scholar.

114. Ibid., 39.

115. Debates of the 1845 Texas Convention, 472, quoted in Dinan, The American State Constitutional Tradition, 39.

116. Texas Constitution of 1845, art. VII, sec. 37; Alabama Constitution of 1819 “Mode of Amending the Constitution.”

117. Missouri Constitution of 1820, art. XII; Arkansas Constitution of 1836, art. IV, sec. 35; Tennessee Constitution of 1834, art. XI, sec. 3; Florida Constitution of 1839, art. XIV, sec. 1, 2; Mississippi Constitution of 1832, “Mode of Amending the Constitution;” Delaware Constitution of 1831, art. IX; Kentucky Constitution of 1799, art. IX, sec. 1.

118. Tolley, Michael Carlton, State Constitutionalism in Maryland (New York, 1992), 22–23Google Scholar. Like other states at the time, this advance was accompanied by restrictions on the vote for African American men.

119. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 387.

120. Ibid., 24.

121. Roman Hoyos, “The Rise and Fall of Popular Sovereignty: Constitutional Conventions, Law, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century America” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2010), 120–34; Hoyos has written an outstanding institutional history of the constitutional convention that traces development through the long nineteenth century and finds “the peaceful revolution doctrine faced its most serious challenge in slavery.”

122. Debates and Proceedings of the Maryland Reform Convention to Revise the State Constitution, Vol. I (Annapolis, 1851), 143.

123. Maryland Constitution of 1850, art. I, sec. 1.

124. Hoyos, “The Rise and Fall of Popular Sovereignty,” 133.

125. Debates and Proceedings of the Maryland Reform Convention to Revise the State Constitution, Vol. II (Annapolis, 1851), 113.

126. Ibid., 116.

127. Ibid., 161.

128. Ibid., 156.

129. Maryland Constitution of 1851, art. III, sec. 43.

130. Dinan, John, The Virginia State Constitution, A Reference Guide (Westport, Conn., 2006), 10.Google Scholar

131. Ibid., 4–5.

132. Ibid., 6.

133. Bruce, Dickson D. Jr., The Rhetoric of Conservatism, The Virginia Convention of 1829–30, and the Conservative Tradition in the South (San Marino, Calif., 1982), 175–79.Google Scholar

134. Einhorn, , American Taxation, American Slavery, 236–39Google Scholar.

135. Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia State Convention of 1829–30 (Richmond, 1830), 76 (emphasis in original).

136. Shade, William G., Democratizing the Old Dominion, Virginia, and the Second Party System, 1824–1861 (Charlottesville, 1996), 67.Google Scholar

137. Sutton, Robert P., Revolution to Secession: Constitution Making in the Old Dominion (Charlottesville, 1989), 103–21.Google Scholar

138. Simpson, Craig, “Political Compromise and Slavery: Henry A. Wise and the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850–1851,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 83, no. 4 (October 1975): 390–92.Google Scholar

139. Callahan, Maud Fulcher, Evolution of the Constitution of West Virginia (Morgantown, 1909), 12–16Google Scholar; Simpson, “Political Compromise and Slavery,” 387–92.

140. Register of the Debates of the Va. Reform Convention (Richmond, 1851), 372, quoted in Dinan, The Virginia State Constitution, 9.

141. Simpson, “Political Compromise and Slavery,” 388.

142. Freehling, Alison Goodyear, Drift Toward Dissolution: The Virginia Slavery Debate of 1831–1832 (Baton Rouge, 1982), 15–35.Google Scholar

143. Ibid., 34.

144. Wolf, Race and Liberty in the New Nation, xii.

145. Ibid., 183.

146. Sutton, Revolution to Secession, 130.

147. Dinan, The Virginia State Constitution, 9.

148. Shade, Democratizing the Old Dominion, 279.

149. Ibid.

150. Orth, John V., North Carolina State Constitution, With History and Commentary (Chapel Hill, 1993), 2–5.Google Scholar

151. Ibid., 8–9.

152. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 418.

153. North Carolina Constitution of 1776, Art, II, sec. 1, Amend. 1835. The governor would be elected by the same electorate as the house of commons.

154. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 420.

155. Ibid.

156. Kruman, Marc W., Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836–1865 (Baton Rouge, 1983), 12–13.Google Scholar

157. Orth, , North Carolina State Constitution, 10Google Scholar.

158. North Carolina Constitution of 1776, Amend. 31, 1835.

159. North Carolina Constitution of 1776, Art, I, sec. 3, Amend. 1835; amended again in 1857 to remove all property qualifications.

160. North Carolina Constitution of 1776, Art, I, sec. 1, Amend. 1835.

161. Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of North Carolina, Called to Amend the Constitution of the State, which Assembled at Raleigh, June 4, 1835 (Raleigh: Joseph Gales and Sons, 1836), 120.

162. Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of North Carolina, Called to Amend the Constitution of the State, which Assembled at Raleigh, June 4, 1835, 133.

163. Adams, Willi Paul, The First State Constitutions, Republican Ideology, and the Making of State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era (Lanham, Md., 2001), 138Google Scholar (only South Carolina retained amendment by a majority of legislature in its second constitution); Fehrenbacher, Sectional Crisis and Southern Constitutionalism, 88 (among slave states, “only South Carolina’s constitution ever contained a religious qualification for voting”), 91 (“Of course the great exception to the general trend was aristocratic South Carolina”), 97 (“In 1860, the legislature of South Carolina was still choosing the state’s governor and other executive officers”); Green, Constitutional Development in the South Atlantic States, 91 (“All states except South Carolina”), 93 (“except South Carolina”), 248 (“When we turn to South Carolina we find a striking contrast with the other South Atlantic States”), 303 (popular election of governor “in all states except South Carolina”); Kevin Hill, “South Carolina: Defining Power, Defining People,” in The Constitutionalism of the American States, ed. George E. Connor and Christopher W. Hammons (Columbia, Mo., 2008), 343 (“South Carolina was the last state to take away the power to appoint presidential electors from the legislature”), (South Carolina only submitted one constitution to the people for ratification, the Reconstruction Constitution of 1868); Kruman, Between Authority and Liberty, 48 (“South Carolinians chose a different route”), 51 (“Every state but South Carolina ordered annual elections for representatives and governors”), 85 (“every state constitution but South Carolina’s”), 122 (“South Carolina’s experience was somewhat different”), Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism, 103 (“Only this document [South Carolina Constitution of 1776] and the 1790 South Carolina Constitution—out of the first twenty-five state constitutions—do not call for annual elections”); Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions, 83 (“all the original states except South Carolina”), 106 n. 49 (“The only constitution as of 1800 with racial qualifications for voting was the South Carolina Constitution of 1790, art. 1, sec. 4”).

164. South Carolina Constitution of 1790, art. I, sec. 4, Amend. 4 (1810).

165. Green, , Constitutional Development in the South Atlantic States, 303Google Scholar.

166. Fehrenbacher, , Sectional Crisis and Southern Constitutionalism, 88Google Scholar.

167. Hill, Kevin, “South Carolina: Defining Power, Defining People,” in The Constitutionalism of the American States, ed. Connor and Hammons, 343; Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions, 106Google Scholar.

168. South Carolina Constitution of 1861, art. I, sec. 5.

169. Hill, “South Carolina,” 343.

170. McCurry, Stephanie, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (New York, 1995), 14.Google Scholar

171. Ibid., 93.

172. Billings, Warren M., “From the Seed: The Constitution of 1812,” in In Search of Fundamental Law: Louisiana’s Constitutions, 1812–1974, ed. Billings, Warren M. and Haas, Edward F. (Lafayette, 1993), 6–9.Google Scholar

173. Schafer, Judith K., “Reform or Experiment? The Louisiana Constitution of 1845,” in In Search of Fundamental Law, ed. Billings and Haas, 21Google Scholar.

174. Ibid., 27.

175. Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of Louisiana which Assembled at the City of New Orleans, January 14, 1844 [sic] (New Orleans, 1845), 148.

176. Louisiana Constitution of 1845, Tit. II, art. 8, 15.

177. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 119–21.

178. Green, George D., Finance and Economic Development in the Old South: Louisiana Banking, 1804–1861 (Stanford, 1972), 13–14.Google Scholar

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180. Everard, Wayne M., “Louisiana’s ‘Whig’ Constitution Revisited: The Constitution of 1852,” in In Search of Fundamental Law, ed. Billings and Haas (Lafayette, 1993), 37.Google Scholar

181. Ibid., 43.

182. Journal of the Convention to Form a New Constitution for the State of Louisiana (New Orleans: Crescent Office, 1852), 66.

183. Ibid.

184. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil, 28.

185. Holland, Randy J., The Delaware State Constitution (New York, 2011), 19.Google Scholar

186. Ibid., 14–15.

187. Delaware Constitution of 1831, art. II, sec. 3, art. IV, sec. 1, art. IX; Holland, The Delaware State Constitution, 17.

188. Holland, The Delaware State Constitution, 16.

189. Ibid., 17.

190. Ibid.

191. Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Delaware (Dover, Del., 1853), 188.

192. Mr. Bates, a slaveholder, said, “I do not think there is any necessity for introducing a clause like this into our Constitution for the reason there is no danger of the Legislature interfering. The question seems to be settled and at rest, and I think this proposition is calculated to renew agitation.” Ibid., 201.

193. Holland, The Delaware State Constitution, 18.

194. Ibid., 19.

195. Cooper, William J., The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828–1856 (Baton Rouge, 1982), xiii.Google Scholar

196. Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery, 232.

197. Freehling, The South vs. The South, 19.

198. Ibid.

199. Ibid., 17–25.