Bad labor law

The constitution and slavery: 

(No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.)

Most of the whites coming over were indentured servants for time limited contracts.  Nothing racist in the constitution.   I guess the law needed clarifying.

Time limited contracts abolish the race problem because eventually we get a population of free African-americans. Slave trading from Africa had long since been abolished (by  1808),  White indentured servitude continued. Why? Because long term contracts made sense, it was the way on which one earned their right to free labor in America, eventually.

So, the dilemma, it was race and race prevented the continued normalization of labor law and Davis and Lee knew this at the time.  At the time, a time limit of 20 years on indentured servitude would have been very unfair to blacks, but it would have worked.  The time limit opens opportunities for skills since the servitude was now a scarce quantity, it needed quality.

Exploring the time limit. The trade here is that we now get a large number of European kids sold off to American families and firms, for 20 years, a new restriction on free labor. But the black indentured servants get a break, racially equality, in a sense; white and blacks treated equally shitty, even indians get it better.  The change to the constitution was simple.