How Many Presidents Owned Slaves? Revisiting “Shithole” Countries

photo credit: Pyroashe

We have had 45 presidents—and 12 have owned slaves. Put another way, 12 of the first 18 presidents were slaveholders: George Washington* (between 250-350); Thomas Jefferson* (about 200); James Madison* (more than 100); Andrew Jackson* (fewer than 200); Martin Van Buren (one); William Henry Harrison (eleven); John Tyler* (about 70); James Polk* (about 25); Zachary Taylor* (fewer than 150); Andrew Johnson (probably eight); and Ulysses S. Grant (probably five). Asterisks denote that the president owned slaves while in office.

Why does this matter?

The Constitution was drafted with racial bias. Yes, that’s a very serious charge. Here is the evidence.

Only “a natural born Citizen” is eligible to be president. That knocked out free blacks, slaves, and foreigners. It also disqualified most whites who did not own enough property or who worked under servitudes (think apprenticeships).

“Electors” voted for presidents (think Electoral College). 

Electors were apportioned among the states along the lines of the Three-Fifths Compromise.  Slaveholding states were allowed to count their black captives as three-fifths of a person. This added twenty congressional seats—and consequently, twenty presidential electors— to the voting pool of electors.  

In other words, presidential elections gave an advantage to states that used their ports and marketplaces to sell captive migrants. Thus, the people elected to the office of president were the byproduct, to some degree, of a slave-owning group of electors. 

Presidents not only owned slaves; at times, they used constitutional powers of diplomacy to affect the migration of blacks. 

George Washington—an ambivalent slaveholders while in office — used his Article II powers in behalf of Georgia to secure a fugitive slave accord with Spain in 1791. The effort grew out of slaves running away from Georgia to Spanish territory in Florida.

Thomas Jefferson used diplomacy to try to "deport" blacks-- free and slaves-- to Sierre Leone.

Article II power—the Constitutional power for presidents— is naively viewed as a neutral enumeration of strong executive powers without regard to its advantageous treatment of whites who were tied to a growing slave economy.  

So that was history. Why does it matter today?  Today, 19.8 million naturalized citizens are constitutionally barred from holding this office. Talented public figures, ranging from Alexander Hamilton, Henry Kissinger, and Arnold Schwarzenegger to Madeleine Albright and Ariana Huffington, have been, or are today, constitutionally barred from office. 

This is worth considering when, as widely reported, our current president believes that countries with black populations are “shithole” nations, and the legal immigration system which brings people of color to America is being heavily restricted.