The delegates now considered the report of the Committee of Eleven, which had created a compromise over the issues of the slave trade and international commerce.
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (SC), seconded by Gorham (MA), moved to alter the compromise, which let Congress ban the slave trade in 1800. He wanted to change the year to 1808.
Over Madison’s (VA) objection, the motion passed 7–4, with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia opposed.
Gouverneur Morris (PA) proposed two emendations to the clause: changing the wording from “importation of such persons” to “importation of slaves” and explicitly naming Georgia and North and South Carolina as the states doing the importing. “He wished it to be known... that this part of the Constitution was a compliance with those States,” but he was willing to drop the wording if the delegates from those states objected.
Mason didn’t mind using the term “slave” but worried that naming the specific states would cause offense.
Sherman (CT) and Clymer (PA) did not want to use the word “slave” since it was “not pleasing to some people.”
Williamson (NC) said “that both in opinion and practice he was against slavery; but thought it more in favor of humanity, from a view of all circumstances” for South Carolina and Georgia to remain part of the United States as slave trading states than for them to be excluded for that reason.
G. Morris withdrew his motion to amend the slave trade clause to make it more explicit.
There was now a debate over taxing the importation of enslaved Africans. Sherman was opposed, because taxing slaves as imports amounted to “acknowledging men to be property.” Madison agreed. King (MA), Langdon (NH), and C. C. Pinckney all said that the tax was part of the necessary compromise on the slave trade. Mason and Gorham encouraged Sherman to think more about the importance of using taxes to discourage the slave trade and to think less about the dehumanization that such a tax perhaps implied. Sherman responded “that the smallness of the duty showed revenue to be the object, not the discouragement of the importation.”
G. Morris noted that the vague wording of “importation of such persons” suggested that the US Congress could tax states admitting non-enslaved immigrants. Regardless, the clause permitting taxation on the “importation of such persons” passed with unanimous support from the state delegations.