th Pinckney, the
South Carolinian who regarded slavery as higher than any of the Ten
Commandments.

[Footnote 1: Fiske, _Critical Period_, 250.]

The second compromise referred to the slave trade, which was
particularly defended by South Carolina and Georgia. The raising of
rice and indigo in those States caused an increasing death-rate among
the slaves. The slave trade, which brought many kidnapped slaves from
Africa to those States was needed to replenish the number of slaves
who died. Virginia had not yet become an important breeding-place of
slaves who were sold to planters farther south. The members of the
Convention who wished to put an end to this hideous traffic proposed
that it should be prohibited, and that the enforcement of the
prohibition should be assigned to the General Government. Pinckney,
however, keen to defend his privileged institution and the special
interests of his State, bluntly informed the Convention that if they
voted to abolish the slave trade, South Carolina would regard it as a
polite way of telling her that she was not wanted in the new Union. To
think of attempting to form a Union without South Carolina amazed them
all and made them pliable. Although there was considerable opposition
to giving the General Government control over shipping, this provision
was passed. The Northerners saw in it the germs of a tariff act which
would benefit their manufacturers, and they agreed that the slave
trade should not be interfered with before 1808 and that no export tax
should be authorized.

The third compromise affected representation. The Convention had
already voted that the Congress should consist of two parts, a Senate
and a House of Representatives. By a really clever device each State
sent two members to the Senate, thus equalizing the small and large
States in that branch of the Government. The House, on the other hand,
represented the People, and the number of members elected from each
State corresponded, therefore, to the population.

As I do not attempt to make even a summary of the details of the
Convention, I should pass over many of the other topics which it
considered, often with very heated discussion. The fundamental problem
was how to preserve the rights of the States and at the same time give
the Central Government sufficient power. By devices which actually
worked, and for many years continued to work, this conflict was
smoothed over, although sixty years later the question o