zahavasdad: The constitution didn’t address racial intermarriage and up to that point in American law, it was governed by the religious law of the parties, and under canon law, there was no problem with interracial marriage. Some states passed statutes banning interracial marriage, but its hard to say what the people in the constitutional convention felt. Many felt it was not appropriate for the government to dabble in marriage law. It does seem many felt that slavery should be abolished, and indeed, most Americans at the time, based on the language of the Declaration of Independence or “Sommerset’s case” (in 1772 holding slavery incompatible with the English common law) believed that slavery was already illegal or that the states were required to unwind slavery in an orderly way.
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