One of the most divisive issues that the framers faced during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was slavery. The Northern states as well as many Southern delegates denounced it as repugnant. However, upon threats by Georgia and Carolinas, the Northern delegates did not insist on banning slavery or slave trade, and they even gave in to those Southerners by admitting a provision on returning fugitive slaves to the Southern states.

During such foundational moments of forming a union, many members of such constitutional conventions face similar dilemmas: When they get together to form a “more perfect union” they have to make compromises on their strongly held convictions. In many cases, if they insist on those ethical convictions, there will be no union. A lot of their interlocutors may be sexist, racist, religious bigots, or insist on preserving abominable practices for the sake of preserving their way of life. But they are still part of the society and they form a significant constituency.

For the sake of inclusion and unity, people with strong ethical objections often make such compromises, hoping that these issues will be solved over time. But in many cases those concessions become petrified and recognized by legalization. In some cases, they come back to haunt this union and embroil it in perpetual conflicts, and even in the form of more serious challenges, such as civil wars. This is exactly what happened in the U.S. history. Lingering as an unresolved issue, tabling the issue of slavery cost a Civil War almost a century later with very atrocious actions and crimes in between against humanity in the context of the American people of African descent.

If you were part of the 1787 Convention, or any such convention anywhere during those foundational moments, what would you do? Would you insist on your strongly held ethical conviction at the risk of jeopardizing the unity of the country (this means keeping on an ongoing civil war sometimes), or would you prioritize having a deal and compromise at that moment, tabling the issue to a later date to be solved gradually. Which one do you think is a better course of action?