But the principal object was undoubtedly the slave-trade; and this particular phraseology was employed, instead of speaking directly of the importation of _slaves_ into the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, in order, on the one hand, not to give offence to those States, and on the other, to avoid offending those who objected to the use of the word "slaves" in the Constitution. Elliot, V. 477, 478.
[227] That part of the compromise relating to the slave-trade, &c. was adopted in Convention by the votes of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, _ay_, 7; New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, _no_, 4. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia voted for a proposition made by C. Pinckney, to postpone the report, in order to take up a clause requiring all commercial regulations to be passed by two thirds of each house. But on the rejection of this motion, the report of the compromise committee, recommending that a two-thirds vote for a navigation act be stricken out, was agreed to, _nem. con._; as was also the clause relating to a capitation tax.
[228] See the note on the American abolition of the slave-trade, _ante_, Vol. I. p. 460.
[229] See the remarks of John Rutledge. Madison, Elliot, V. 491.
[231] The point respecting the slave-trade was insisted upon by the delegates of those three States, both as a matter of State pride and a matter of practical interest. They regarded the increase of their slave population by new importations as a thing of peculiarly domestic concern, the control of which they were unwilling to transfer to the general government. But they also contended for a political right which their States intended to exercise. The following table, taken from the United States Census, shows that in the twenty years which elapsed from 1790 to 1810 during eighteen of which the importation of slaves could not be prohibited by Congress, the slaves of those three States increased in a ratio so much larger than the rate of increase after the year 1808, as to make it apparent that it was not a mere abstraction on which they insisted. The right to admit the importation of slaves was exercised, and was intended to be exercised;--as some of the delegates of the three States declared in the Convention.