Final answer:
The US Constitution was seen as proslavery due to the Three-Fifths Compromise and protections for the slave trade, but also had elements that antislavery advocates believed could be used to challenge and eventually end slavery, such as the potential to ban slavery in the territories and the Fifth Amendment's due process clause.
Step-by-step explanation:
The US Constitution was deemed both a proslavery and an antislavery document due to various stipulations that attempted to balance the contentious issue of slavery during its framing. On one hand, the Constitution was seen as proslavery due to the Three-Fifths Compromise (Article 1, Section 2), which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for taxation and representation purposes, thereby bolstering the political power of slaveholding states without granting any rights to the enslaved individuals. Additionally, the Constitution stipulated that Congress could not ban the slave trade before 1808 and allowed laws concerning the return of fugitive slaves.
From an antislavery perspective, the Constitution included elements viewed by some as a foundation for future antislavery actions. The framers made provisions that could lead to the eventual limitation or end of the slave trade after 1808, and the Tenth Amendment was interpreted by some to mean that slavery could be banned in the territories. Moreover, the Fifth Amendment's due process clause was argued to provide a basis for the enactment of legislation that could seize property, which antislavery activists saw as a way to challenge slavery.