The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

by Nikole Hannah-Jones

When private property extends to human beings, however, a particularly strong and expansive set of protections is required. Human beings, after all, can run away or revolt. The founders recognized this, and in the Constitution they safeguarded the human property of those who owned enslaved people through a number of provisions. Article I, Section 8 granted Congress the power to summon the militia to “suppress insurrections,” understood to mean rebellions of the enslaved.19 Article I, Section 9 forbade Congress from ending the slave trade until 1808. Article V, Section 2 prohibited free states from emancipating runaways: human property in the South would remain human property in the North. The framers helped create a doctrine of private property strong enough to justify and enforce human trafficking, so much so that abolitionists publicly burned copies of the Constitution.