Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Bill Bennett’s latest book, America: The Last Best Hope, released last month. The book can be purchased here.

Most discussion of the Constitution and religion today focuses naturally on the First Amendment, but the original Constitution contained a powerful provision that receives less attention. Article VI, Section 3 states: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” This was a revolutionary breakthrough for religious liberty, one of the most advanced statements in the world—then or even now.

Maryland’s John Carroll, a Catholic, had noted that “the American army swarmed with Roman Catholic soldiers.” How could the new government justify denying them full civil rights? Similarly, Jewish Americans had participated in the struggle for independence, notably Hayim Solomon, who had arranged loans for the Continental Congress and helped save Washington’s army from starvation. By banning religious tests for office, the Constitution assured that religion would never be a bar to any able American serving the new republic.

But what about slavery? “Persons held to service or labor.” That is the awkward phrase the Constitution uses to describe slaves. After the fight over large state/small state representation, the treatment of slavery became the greatest source of conflict. Very early, a clash occurred over this “peculiar institution.” The Founders’ reticence in dealing with this explosive topic came from their belief, as Madison pointed out, that it was “wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.” At the time of the Constitutional Convention, slavery existed in nearly all of the states—and had existed since they were founded. Massachusetts had abolished slavery and four states—New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania—were in the process of doing so. Emancipation was advancing in New York and New Jersey. The Founders believed that slavery was on the path to extinction. Ninety percent of slaves lived in the South.

The Founders were born into a society that permitted slavery. Connecticut’s Roger Sherman called the slave trade “iniquitous.” New York’s Gouverneur Morris, a brilliant orator and a representative of great wealth, stood stoutly on his wooden leg and denounced slavery in the harshest terms. This “nefarious institution” was “the curse of heaven in the states where it prevailed,” he said, ignoring the fact that his own New York still permitted slavery. He compared the slave states with the free regions. Slavery is characterized by misery and poverty, but the free regions (actually, states with relatively few slaves) were characterized by “rich and noble cultivation.”

This was brave talk from a man who was a close friend to George Washington. Sitting silently in the chair, Washington was America’s most prominent slaveholder. But Morris was hardly alone in his disdain for slavery. Washington’s good friend and neighbor, George Mason, was also a slaveholder. Still, Mason expressed the enlightened prevailing opinion of the Upper South: “Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. Slavery prevents whites from immigrating and produces the most pernicious effects on manners.” Those were the practical reasons. Mason went further: “Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a country!” Mason passionately called for the general government to prevent the increase of slavery.

High-minded as they were, these noble arguments ran into a stone wall of resistance. “Interest alone is the governing principle of nations,” South Carolina’s John Rutledge answered coolly. Morris, Mason, and Madison did not move him with their moral case against slavery. Just as bluntly, Rutledge said that any attempt to interfere with slavery in the states would result in the South’s refusing to ratify the Constitution. Once, again, the threat of disunion loomed.

Faced with this impasse, the Founders carefully crafted a Constitution that avoided even mentioning slavery, Africans, or the slave trade. It dealt with slavery by talking around the subject. First, it based representation in the House of Representatives on a three-fifths formula carried over from the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution required a census to count the whole number of free persons, to exempt “Indians not taxed,” and to count “three-fifths of all other Persons.” Second, they compromised on abolishing the African slave trade by permitting Congress to outlaw it, but only twenty years after ratification of the Constitution. Third, the Constitution required states to return to their states of origin all “persons held to service or labor” in another state. In effect, this was a fugitive slave clause.

Volumes have been written about these compromises with the existence of slavery. Some have claimed that by compromising with this hated institution, the Founders surrendered all moral claims to being defenders of liberty and human rights. Foreigners laughed when England’s Samuel Johnson asked: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” Some even argue that they voided the philosophy of the declaration that “all men are created equal.”

It is clear that all but a tiny few of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention morally disapproved of slavery. It is equally clear that not a word of the Constitution would have to be changed if the states continued to emancipate the slaves on their own.

Continued...