In the summer of 1787, delegates met in Philadelphia to create a stronger national government, but their debates over representation, commerce, and executive power were shadowed by slavery. Through secrecy and compromise—the Great Compromise, the Three-Fifths Clause, limits on banning the international slave trade, and the Fugitive Slave Clause—the Constitution balanced competing regional interests while leaving the most painful questions unresolved.
The episode shows how those bargains shaped political power, protected slavery in federal law, and carried conflicts into the nation’s future, setting the stage for decades of sectional struggle that eventually led to the Civil War.
2026/09/0223 分