re the real issue (208 et passim).
Out of the contentious debates on the issue came the compromise of a bicameral legislature with two formulas for state representation, but because the electoral college reflected total congressional and senatorial representation, "the fundamentally antidemocratic electoral college developed, at least in part, to protect the interests of slavery" (Finkelman 210). In debates over commerce clauses, there emerged an alliance between Southern states that wanted to export slave-labor-produced crops and the New England states that dominated the shipping of such crops, as well as the shipping involved in the trade of slaves. Finkelman rejects the analysis that the compromises were intended to guarantee Southern membership in the union, saying that commercial interests were the real motivation. As for the fugitive slave clause, which mandated that slave owners could retrieve runaway slaves from nonslave states, Finkelman says that there was little debate on the subject: the northern delegates seemed simply not to understand the import of the issue or were too tired to fight" (221). Indeed, the general criticism of the debates involving slavery is that, despite the moral weight that the dele
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