South Carolina, and Mason of Virginia defended the proposition, insisting that it would be a dangerous concession on the part of the South to leave navigation acts to a mere majority vote.  Sherman of Connecticut, Morris of Pennsylvania, and Spaight of North Carolina declared that the very diversity of interest was a security.  Finally, by a vote of 7 to 4, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia being in the minority, the Convention refused to consider the motion, and the recommendation of the committee passed.[21]

When, on September 10, the Convention was discussing the amendment clause of the Constitution, the ever-alert Rutledge, perceiving that the results of the laboriously settled “bargain” might be endangered, declared that he “never could agree to give a power by which the articles relating to slaves might be altered by the states not interested in that property."[22] As a result, the clause finally adopted, September 15, had the proviso:  “Provided, that no amendment which may be made prior to the year 1808 shall in any manner affect the 1st and 4th clauses in the 9th section of the 1st article."[23]

36. Settlement by the Convention. Thus, the slave-trade article of the Constitution stood finally as follows:—­

“Article I. Section 9.  The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”

This settlement of the slavery question brought out distinct differences of moral attitude toward the institution, and yet differences far from hopeless.  To be sure, the South apologized for slavery, the Middle States denounced it, and the East could only tolerate it from afar; and yet all three sections united in considering it a temporary institution, the corner-stone of which was the slave-trade.  No one of them had ever seen a system of slavery without an active slave-trade; and there were probably few members of the Convention who did not believe that the foundations of slavery had been sapped merely by putting the abolition of the slave-trade in the hands of Congress twenty years hence.  Here lay the danger; for when the North called slavery “temporary,” she thought of twenty or thirty years, while the “temporary” period of the South was scarcely less than a century.  Meantime, for at least a score of years, a policy of strict laissez-faire, so far as the general government was concerned, was to intervene.  Instead of calling the whole moral energy of the people into action, so as gradually to crush this portentous evil, the Federal Convention lulled the nation to sleep by a “bargain,” and left to the vacillating and unripe judgment of the States one of the most threatening of the social and political ills which they were so courageously seeking to remedy.