A NATION DIVIDED on June 15 1864 159 members of the US House of Representatives were gathered in Washington DC It was a hot summer day Representatives waved fans to cool themselves They had been debating for hours The issue at hand was a constitutional amendment An amendment is a change or an addition to the US Constitution If this amendment passed it would outlaw slavery in the United States The House of Representatives and the Senate both have to vote on an amendment The House and the Senate make up the US Congress The Senate had already voted in US representatives meet in the US Capitol building in Washington DC 7
SLAVERY IN THE CONSTITUTION The number of representatives a state has in the House of Representatives depends on its population In 1787 the three-fifths clause was created It said that an enslaved person would count as three-fifths of a person This clause gave states that had large enslaved populations more representatives But enslaved people could not participate in government themselves Another slavery clause in the Constitution was called the fugitive slave clause It said that escaped slaves had to be brought back to their slaveholders In 1793 Congress passed a Fugitive Slave Act This act enforced the fugitive slave clause Anyone caught aiding an escaped slave would be fined 8 favor of the proposed amendment Now it was up to the House James Ashley from Ohio had introduced the amendment in December 1863 Ashley was an abolitionist He wanted slavery to end He had helped people escape slavery He hoped the amendment would get enough votes The vote was taken There was not enough support The amendment fell short by 11 votes
Ashley would have to bring it back for another vote at a later time But this vote showed that views on slavery were shifting SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES By the 1860s slavery had been part of the United States for more than 200 years As the country grew the Northern and Southern regions developed differently This led to different political and social views many of them concerning slavery The economy of the South was based on farming Farmers grew crops such as cotton and tobacco Large plantation owners depended on enslaved people to work in the fields Some enslaved people also had duties in the home They had to clean cook and care for their slaveholders children They were not paid for the work they did They worked long hours Slaveholders could punish their slaves as they saw fit Punishments included whippings 9
