What Did People Expect When the Constitution Was Ratified?
Note to self: Abraham Lincoln, in his seventh debate with Stephen Douglas, cites Herrenvolk agitator Preston Brooks: "[W]hen this Constitution was framed, its framers did not look to [slavery] existing until [1858]":
Brooks of South Carolina once declared that when this Constitution was framed, its framers did not look to the institution existing until this day. When he said this, I think he stated a fact that is fully borne out by the history of the times. But he also said they were better and wiser men than the men of these days; yet the men of these days had experience which they had not, and by the invention of the cotton-gin it became a necessity in this country that slavery should be perpetual.
I now say that, willingly or unwillingly, purposely or without purpose, Judge Douglas has been the most prominent instrument in changing the position of the institution of slavery which the fathers of the Government expected to come to an end ere this--and putting it upon Brooks's cotton-gin basis--placing it where he openly confesses he has no desire there shall ever be an end of it.
This has an obvious bearing on Mark Graber's theory that it was illegitimate for the North to use its numbers in 1858 to pass laws affecting slavery because nobody back in 1787 had thought that the North would have superior numbers in 1858. If you believe Abraham Lincoln and Preston Brooks, it would be equally illegitimate according to Graber's theory for Southerners to hold slaves in 1858.