Fourteen primary documents from 1776 to 1799 — what the founders wrote about slavery in their own hand, what the founding documents say about the institution, and what the archive holds. The documents are presented in order. The reader may compare them directly.
Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence between June 11 and June 28, 1776. His original draft included a passage denouncing the slave trade — blaming King George III for imposing it on the colonies. Between July 1 and July 3, the Continental Congress debated the document. Congress struck the passage. Jefferson recorded this in his Notes on the Debates.
The original rough draft is at Founders Online. The full text of the struck passage reads:
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.
The Constitution contains three provisions directly relating to slavery. It does not use the word "slave" or "slavery" in any of them.
Article I, Section 2 — The Three-Fifths Clause: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." The "other Persons" were enslaved people. They were counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional representation — giving slaveholding states greater representation in Congress than their free population alone would have warranted, while denying enslaved people any representation.
Article I, Section 9 — The Slave Trade Clause: "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight." Congress was barred from prohibiting the Atlantic slave trade for twenty years after ratification. Congress passed the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves in 1807, effective January 1, 1808 — the first day it was constitutionally permitted to do so.
Article IV, Section 2 — The Fugitive Slave Clause: "No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." An enslaved person who escaped to a free state could be reclaimed. The Constitution of the United States is at the National Archives.
Washington's estate inventory — taken after his death in December 1799 — lists 317 enslaved people at Mount Vernon. The inventory is documented at Mount Vernon: mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/ He left two private letters in 1786 that document his stated position on slavery. His will, signed July 9, 1799, documents what he did about it at the end of his life.
I hope it will not be conceived from these observations, that it is my wish to hold the unhappy people, who are the subject of this letter, in slavery. I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it — but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by Legislative authority: and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting.
Five months later, writing to John Francis Mercer, who had offered to pay a debt to Washington in the form of enslaved people, Washington declined:
With respect to the first, I never mean (unless some particular circumstances should compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by the legislature by which slavery in this Country may be abolished by slow, sure, and imperceptable degrees.
Washington's will, signed July 9, 1799 — four months before his death — directed that the enslaved people he personally owned be freed upon Martha Washington's death. He could not free the enslaved people held as "dower slaves" from Martha's Custis inheritance — their status was governed by the Custis estate laws. Of the 317 people at Mount Vernon, 123 were Washington's own; 194 were dower slaves he had no legal power to free. Martha freed Washington's enslaved people in January 1801. Washington's will is documented at Mount Vernon and the Library of Congress.
Hamilton did not own enslaved people. On January 25, 1785, he attended the founding meeting of the Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves in New York City. On February 4, 1785, he attended the second meeting, at which the society's constitution was adopted and Hamilton was appointed to a committee to recommend a course of conduct to members regarding enslaved people they held. The minutes of the meeting are at Founders Online.
Ordered — That Colonel Hamilton, Colonel Troup and Mr. Matlack be a Committee to Report a Line of Conduct to be recommended to the Members of the Society in relation to any Slaves possessed by them; and also to prepare a Recommendation to all such Persons as have manumitted or shall Manumit Slaves to transmit their names and the names and Ages of the Slaves manumitted; in Order that the same may be Registered and the Society be the better Enabled to detect Attempts to deprive such Manumitted Persons of their Liberty.
The Society's founding charter declared that those held as slaves were "by Nature, as much entitled as ourselves" to liberty. Hamilton had proposed that membership in the Society require members to free the people they enslaved. The Society rejected the proposal — more than half of its founding members, including John Jay, held enslaved people.
Plantation records at Montpelier document more than 100 people held in slavery by Madison. He freed none during his lifetime. He freed no one in his will. In retirement, writing to Lafayette in November 1820 about the Missouri Compromise debates — which had reopened the question of slavery in new states — he described the broader predicament in his own words.
All these perplexities develope more and more the dreadful fruitfulness of the original sin of the African trade.
Earlier, in 1789, Madison had written a private memorandum on the possibility of establishing an African colony for freed enslaved people — a proposal that reflected his view that emancipation and colonization would need to proceed together. The memorandum is at Founders Online.
Franklin owned two enslaved people — Peter and King — in Philadelphia during the 1750s, and carried advertisements for the sale of enslaved people in the Pennsylvania Gazette. He later freed both men. In 1787 he became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. On February 3, 1790 — six weeks before his death — he signed and submitted to the First Congress a petition calling for abolition. He was eighty-four years old.
That mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike objects of his Care, and equally designed for the Enjoyment of Happiness, the Society cheerfully acknowledges; and that he, therefore, who infringes that sacred Right, acts in direct Opposition to the Government of God. Your Memorialists, therefore, earnestly entreat your serious attention to the Subject of Slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the Abolition of Slavery, and to discourage every Species of Traffick in the Persons of our fellow Men.
Congress tabled the petition after a bitter debate in which members from South Carolina and Georgia argued that Congress had no authority to act on the question. The full congressional debate and its outcome are documented at the National Archives: archives.gov/legislative/features/franklin
The Monticello research archive documents more than 600 people held in slavery by Jefferson over the course of his lifetime, drawn from his enslaved persons lists, plantation records, and estate inventories. He inherited enslaved people, purchased enslaved people, and held them continuously until his death. He freed two people during his lifetime and five by will. The estate records document 130 people enslaved at Monticello at the time of his death — sold at auction in 1827 to satisfy his debts, which totaled approximately $107,000.
Jefferson's original Declaration draft called the slave trade an "execrable commerce" — documented in Chapter 1 above. His later letters document his stated position on the institution across five decades. The Monticello research archive documents the names and histories of those he enslaved: monticello.org/slavery/
The primary record holds both things simultaneously — Jefferson's written opposition to slavery as an institution and his lifelong practice of holding people in bondage. The documents are in the archive. The reader may compare them directly.
THE PRIMARY RECORD — SIX FOUNDERS
What the archive documents about each of the six most documented founders and slavery — drawn from confirmed primary sources at approved institutional archives.
The primary record on the founders and slavery is extensive for the most documented figures — Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, and Franklin — whose papers are at Founders Online, the Library of Congress, and other approved institutional archives. Many of the other signers of the Declaration of Independence and delegates to the Constitutional Convention have little or no representation in digitized primary source documents accessible at approved archives. This does not reflect on their actions or views — it reflects only the present state of digitization. The papers of many founders are held in state archives, county historical societies, and private collections not yet available online. As digital copies of original source documents become available, this episode will be revised and expanded. The Founders' Record is a living archive.