Although the United States Constitution has never contained the words "slave" or "slavery" within its text, it dealt directly with American slavery in at least five of its provisions and indirectly protected the institution elsewhere in the document.[1][2]
- ^ Morgan, Kenneth (2001). "Slavery and the Debate over Ratification of the United States Constitution". Slavery & Abolition. 22 (3): 40–65. doi:10.1080/714005207. S2CID 146540082.
- ^ Finkelman, Paul (2008). "Making a Covenant with Death: Slavery and the Constitutional Convention". The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable. The five provisions that this essay lists are the four that Frederick Douglass cited in the section on Frederick Douglass in this article plus Article I, section 9, paragraph 4. Finkelman writes, "This clause declared that any 'capitation' or other 'direct tax' had to take into account the three-fifths clause. It ensured that, if a head tax were ever levied, slaves would be taxed at three-fifths the rate of whites." The essay also lists seven of "[t]he most prominent indirect protections of slavery".