By NOAH FELDMAN OCT. 28, 2017, New York Times
Image from article, with caption: A painting of James Madison at the National Portrait Gallery.
Portrait by Chester Harding
When we think about the framers of the Constitution and how they handled the issue
of race, we conjure up the extremes: the hypocrites and the heroes. At one end is
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that “all men are created equal” but believed Africans
were inferior and fathered children with an enslaved woman. At the other end is
Alexander Hamilton, who, at least as depicted by admirers like the biographer Ron
Chernow and the playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, was an ardent abolitionist.
This framing, however, is simplistic and misleading. It is simplistic because it
overlooks harder-to-categorize positions like that of James Madison, the lead drafter
of the Constitution, who genuinely rejected the idea of racial inferiority yet still failed
to put his beliefs in equality and liberty into practice. And it is misleading because it
implies that as long as we avoid having racist attitudes, we can succeed in avoiding
racist policies. We think that if we’re not Jefferson, we must be Hamilton. But this is
not the case.
In this respect, Madison is the founding father who can teach Americans the
most about our present contradictions on race. Madison insisted that enslaved
Africans were entitled to a right to liberty and proposed that Congress purchase all
the slaves in the United States and set them free. Yet not only did he hold slaves on
his plantation in Virginia and fail to free them upon his death, but he also originated
the notorious three-fifths compromise in the Constitution, which counted a slave as
three-fifths of a person for purposes of legislative representation.
The tension between Madison’s aspirational beliefs and his highly constrained
actions continues to be America’s own tension. Like Madison, contemporary United
States society rejects racial inequality in principle. But also like Madison, a majority
of Americans — as reflected in our democratic institutions — are ultimately unwilling
or unable to make the costly changes that would be necessary to achieve equality in
practice.
Most of what can be learned about Madison’s racial attitudes is found in letters of his
that remain largely unexplored. In one astonishing document, written in 1783, he
explained to his father that he faced a quandary with respect to an enslaved man
named Billey, whom Madison had brought with him to Philadelphia as his
manservant while he was in Congress. Madison wrote that he could not bring Billey
back to the family plantation, because after Billey had experienced the relative
freedom of Pennsylvania, “his mind is too thoroughly tainted to be a fit companion
for fellow slaves in Virginia.”
Madison could not “think of punishing him,” he wrote, “merely for coveting that
liberty for which we have paid the price of so much blood, and have proclaimed so
often to be the right, and worthy pursuit, of every human being.” In other words,
Billey possessed the same “right” of liberty as every other human being — the right
they had fought for in the Revolutionary War.
But it was a time of economic crisis. Madison felt he could not free Billey
because he could not afford to. His compromise was to sell Billey into a term of
indentured servitude, as allowed by Pennsylvania law, at the end of which he would
become free. Madison therefore got some value for his slave, while satisfying his
conscience. At the end of his term of service, Billey was indeed freed, taking the
name William Gardener, marrying and staying in Philadelphia, where Madison
continued to have contact with him for years.
Madison understood perfectly well that slavery was morally wrong — and why.
But he also could not overcome the economic reality on which his entire livelihood
and that of the family plantation was based.
Thanks to Madison’s influence, his characteristic treatment of race — principled
ideals followed by compromise — made its way into the Constitution itself. The story
begins in 1783, four years before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The
Continental Congress had asked the states for annual contributions of money,
determined proportionally based on population. Southerners wanted to count slaves
as little as possible to reduce their share; Northerners wanted to count slaves fully so
that the South would pay more. Madison proposed counting three-fifths of slaves as
a compromise, believing it was “very near the true ratio” with respect to the taxable
wealth produced by them. All but two states approved of the proposal, but because
unanimity was required, it did not pass.
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the tables were turned. Southerners
wanted to count slaves fully to increase their legislative representation, while
Northerners argued that slaves, who couldn’t vote, should not count at all. The three-fifths
compromise was adopted precisely because everyone knew that the number
had been used when both sides saw things the other way. Madison was happy to see
it adopted.
There was also the issue of the constitutional provision that preserved the slave
trade for 20 years after ratification. Madison objected strongly to it. Like other
slaveholders, he considered trade in slaves more odious than ownership. Yet when it
became clear that South Carolina and Georgia, backed by Connecticut, insisted on
protecting the slave trade as a condition for agreeing to the Constitution, Madison
went along. Reaching consensus was paramount. Without the guarantee of slavery
and the slave trade, there would have been no Constitution — and that was
Madison’s highest priority.
Further demonstrating the tension between his beliefs and his actions, Madison
called for abolition — but only in private. In 1790, just after drafting the Bill of
Rights, Madison argued in a letter for creating a colony in Africa to resettle freed
slaves. That would, he said, “afford the best hope yet presented of putting an end to
the slavery in which not less than 600,000 unhappy Negroes are now involved.”
His reason for sending former slaves to Africa was “the prejudices of the
whites,” which would make integrating freed blacks “impossible.” He thought that
because prejudice derived “principally from the difference of color,” it must be
“considered as permanent and insuperable.” Years later, Madison proposed that
Congress sell the public the Western lands included in the Louisiana Purchase to
raise $600 million to purchase and free all 1.5 million slaves.
But ultimately Madison could not afford even to free his own slaves in his will.
According to family lore, he left separate instructions to Dolley, his wife, to
emancipate his slaves upon her own death. If this message in fact existed, she was
unable or unwilling to fulfill it.
Madison’s contradictions resonate with our own vexed racial situation. From the
14th Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and affirmative action, America, at
its best, has repeatedly aspired to establish racial equality in the face of our past of
slavery and segregation. Yet the need to accommodate the realities of economics,
politics and the prejudice of others — which is to say, the difficulty that even well-intentioned
people can have in accepting the true cost of meaningful change — has
continued to hold back equality in practice.
Madison had many remarkable qualities. He was a constitutional genius, an
accomplished statesman and a calm, rational leader, even in wartime. When it came
to race, however, he had feet of clay, as do most Americans still. Our founders can
serve as important role models for us — provided we try to learn from their mistakes
and flaws as well as their successes and virtues.
Noah Feldman is a professor of law at Harvard, a columnist for Bloomberg View and the
author of the forthcoming book “The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan,
President.”
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