Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 27
slaves was one of the South’s biggest industries. Following secession, to protect their
breeding operations, the Confederate States of America cast a permanent slave
importation prohibition into their own constitution.
Their policy of protecting one of their main industries with a total and eternal tariff was
another dichotomy of their socio-economic life. While in the Union, southern states
continuously complained about the restraint of trade imposed upon them by the tariffs of
the federal government. They thought that the imports they liked in return for their
export of tobacco, cotton and other products of slave labor should receive preferential
treatment. Yet, when free to write their own law devoid of barriers to trade, they
constitutionally imposed total protectionism for slave breeding. Thus, they proved that
their real objection was not to tariffs but to competition for their products.
The second condition referred to the fugitive slave clause (that I discuss in Chapter 4’s
section The Grand Design) as a moral issue. It was probably the most proximate cause
to rally northern determination to stop the creeping pressure of slavery’s expansionism
and to fan the fires for war.
The third concession related to counting slaves toward the election of representatives.
Though the southerners didn’t want to give their slaves any legal rights and certainly not
the right to vote, much less to hold office, they wanted them to count when deciding how
many representatives each state could send to Congress. Both parties agreed that each
slave was equal to 60 % of a white for this purpose only. After the Civil War, blacks
were given the full right to vote and thus were able to elect legislators favorable to their
causes. After Reconstruction stopped and the federal military presence was
discontinued, southern states restricted black vote again with franchise requirements
and other discriminatory practices. A gigantic step had taken place but its results were
still muddled. Civil rights were not yet equal. I am glad I was not yet born.
When first written in 1787, the Constitution, carrying these three compromises, was
submitted to the states for ratification. None of the amendments submitted, known as
the Bill of Rights, touched upon them. After the War of 1812, a new generation of
leaders was already in control of the new country and the question of slavery started to
gain momentum. The admission of Missouri as a slave state in 1820 was the first crisis
brought by the immovable determination of slaveholders to expand their system into
new territories. Henry Clay’s compromise saved the Union but pretty well doomed the
new territories west of Missouri and south of its southern boundary (Mason-Dixon line)
to suffer legalized slavery. History would later have it that from the seven sons of Mr.
Clay, four would don the Confederate uniform and three would fight for the Union,
literally pitting brother against brother.
After its separation from Mexico in 1836, Texas’ population and economy continued to
grow with southerners who brought their slaves with them. The 1845 admission of
Texas into the Union was another crisis. By annexing a sovereign state carrying its own
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