The federal militia clause was designed partly to suppress slave uprisings.

Evidence

But as Pauline Maier notes in Ratification, Madison also explained, as a sop to the South, that the militia clause in the Constitution “gave the states a ‘supplementary security’ by allowing Congress to enlist the help of other states in suppressing insurrections (including slave uprisings) or resisting invasions.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 787

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s core thesis about origin stories as infrastructure — the Founding-era design intent around slavery as foundational to the constitutional system.