Southern delegates, fearful of a free North overwhelming them in the future, argued that since representation was to be based on population, the slaves should be thought of as people; each should thus be considered as a full person, despite being denied basic rights. Pierce Butler of South Carolina responded that the matter at issue was the relative wealth of the states.
Their commitment to union, though, overmastered their commitment to liberty. Southerners whined and threatened; northerners temporized and accommodated. William R. Finally, they agreed that each enslaved human would count toward three-fifths of a full person for purposes of representation only.
Their decision had pernicious and far-reaching effects. In the Electoral College, the small-state bonus and the federal ratio combined again to grant the southern states disproportionate power. For the next seventy-eight years, the three-fifths clause would exercise extraordinary and far-reaching effects on American politics.
In no other slaveholding society of the Atlantic was any slave power ever given such an enormous gift. By Patrick Rael December 19, 1. The Constitutional Convention, Source: Tenth Amendment Center. When the Constitutional Convention met in , it adopted Madison's earlier suggestion. The taxes that the Three-Fifths Compromise dealt with were "direct" taxes, as opposed to excise or import taxes.
It was not until that Congress imposed the first genuine direct taxes in American history: a tax on dwelling-houses and a tax on slaves aged 12 to The Three-Fifths Compromise greatly augmented southern political power.
In the Continental Congress, where each state had an equal vote, there were only five states in which slavery was a major institution. Thus the southern states had about 38 percent of the seats in the Continental Congress. Because of the Three-Fifths Compromise, the southern states had nearly 45 percent of the seats in the first U.
Congress, which took office in It is ironic that it was a liberal northern delegate, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise, as a way to gain southern support for a new framework of government. Southern states had wanted representation apportioned by population; after the Virginia Plan was rejected, the Three-Fifths Compromise seemed to guarantee that the South would be strongly represented in the House of Representatives and would have disproportionate power in electing Presidents.
Or do the large enslaved populations of southern states also count? Now, if you were a southern slave holder, you would have been strongly in favor of counting this population, because it means you get more representation, and thus more power in the House of Representatives.
If you were against slavery or from a small state, or both, you would've been bitterly opposed to the notion that people who have no rights as citizens should be counted as citizens to give those states more power in Congress. So, here's what they decided, according to article one. Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.
This three fifths of all other persons really means enslaved Africans. And you'll notice that the framers are really talking around slavery. In the part about the international slave trade, they said migration of such persons.
Now they say three fifths of all other persons. In fact, the word slavery never appears in the original constitution. So, why do they say three fifths of all other persons or migration of such persons as states think it proper to admit? And honestly, I think the answer to this is that the framers were ashamed of slavery. They were ashamed that this institution existed in a democratic society. They knew that the eyes of the world, the eyes of history, would look at this document and this institution completely sullied the idea of a democratic government.
So, as it says here, their agreement was that for every five enslaved people who lived in a state, three of them would be counted for the purposes of population.
This is a huge victory for slaveholders, getting more power in Congress for having people who can't vote, who can't be citizens. Why did the delegates of other states allow this to happen? And I think the simple answer is that the constitution would not have been ratified were it not for this compromise, among others. The states of the south were too important to getting that nine out of 13 necessary votes to replace the articles of confederation with this new constitution.
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