Law student James L. Hubard records John Minor discussing the absence of explicit references to slavery in the Constitution where apportionment and taxation are concerned. Minor makes alludes to slavery as a major flash point for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
“The words slave and slavery do not occur in the constitution of the U.S. though the things thereby represented are encountered in... the clauses on taxation and representation. Art. 1st S.2.3. Also in the clause which [?] the jurisdiction of the slave trade by the U.S. government for 20 yrs. Art. 1, S. 9, clause 1. Art 4. S.2, clause 3. As to the first Article which provides for the apportionment of political [?] throughout the Union. It’s suggestion was a source of great contention and some bad feeling between the advocates and opponents of slavery in the national convention for framing the constitution, but its adoption happily adjusted all of these differences.” (p. 225)
Minor then addresses calls for the complete abolition of slavery, and supposed “jealousy” from the nothern states over the power of the slaveholding states to legislate slavery on their own and use slavery as a source of representative power and taxable income.
“The jealousy of the northern states… and many of their delegates giving Congress the power to legislate on slavery. This opposition to slavery was not [confined?] to the northern members, for Mr. Luther Martin, a delegate from Maryland introduces a resolution that Congress was not only to abolish slavery but the slavery trade and to lay a tax on its importation…. For such an imposition [?] to weaken the south, and that a provision such as the one proposed was inconsistent with the spirit of our own constitution. His resolution was opposed by South Carolina, Georgia and some of the New England states, and [seconded?] by George Mason and James Madison of VA. (3 Madison Papers 1388.?)” (p. 225)