The Constitution and that 3/5 compromise
When Republicans offered their controversial reading of the Constitution at the opening session of this Congress, they and the Democrats who participated decided (wisely or unwisely; you be the judge) to hold back from reading every single word, and instead left out parts that have been superseded by amendments. One of the omissions was the 3/5 compromise, which counted slaves as 3/5 of a free person for enumeration (taxation and apportionment) purposes.
Understandably; it sounds awful to modern ears. Three-fifths of a person is a terrible concept. Like prohibition—also omitted from the reading yesterday—it’s no longer operative, although it’s certainly part of our history.
History, ah history! How many people know what how the 3/5 compromise came to be, or what it represented? It was the result of a fight that was ongoing, even at the very beginning of the nation, between the North and South, free states and slave. Those who ignore that history ignore the fact that, far from being casually accepted, slavery was acknowledged to be a problem for the country from the start:
The Three-Fifths compromise was a compromise between Southern and Northern states reached during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787…
Delegates opposed to slavery generally wished to count only the free inhabitants of each state. Delegates supportive of slavery, on the other hand, generally wanted to count slaves in their actual numbers. Since slaves could not vote, slaveholders would thus have the benefit of increased representation in the House and the Electoral College. The final compromise of counting “all other persons” as only three-fifths of their actual numbers reduced the power of the slave states relative to the original southern proposals, but increased it over the northern position.
So in an odd irony, it was the anti-slavery forces who wanted to leave slaves out of the count, in order to decrease the power of the slave states, and it was the pro-slavery forces who wanted to count them as full people. How many people today—even if you include those who know there was a 3/5 rule about slaves in the Constitution—are aware of these facts behind it?
And how many are aware that, if compromises such as this had not occurred, the United States would not have been a viable entity in the first place? By such agreements, the Founders merely postponed the day of reckoning that they knew might come in blood, but that they hoped might come in peace.
The truth of history is far more fascinating, and far more complex, than the simple morality tale that various factions like to make of it.
Another too-little-known item in the founders’ struggle regarding slavery is found in a passage deleted from Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration for the sake of compromise.
Obviously, the Republicans attending the Constitutional Convention considered blacks to be only 3/5ths of a person. Such raciss stuff.
OTOH, woman were counted for representation even though they couldn’t vote at the time.
The Demoncrat Socialists always forget that Southern Democrats fostered slavery, Southern Democrats seceded from the Union, Democrats fostered “Jim Crow ” laws, Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Democrats were the main opponents of women’s voting rights, Democrats opposed anti-lynching laws.
Funny how history gets twisted, ain’t it? The great Democrat idol, Thomas Jefferson, carried on a long sexual relationship with Sally Hemmings because she had no choice as a slave.
OTOH, Lincoln was a tyrant and psuedo-dictator who killed 600,00 Americans for a nebulous “Union.” Both parties have evil in their past.
The Statists and their allies have been in a snit because the amended Constitution was read. While the GOP’s motives in doing that may not be entirely pure, the intent was to remind Congress of their responsibilities, and of the limitations placed on them by the governing document. Therefore, only the amended constitution was applicable.
Sadly, most Americans have only a hazy idea of what the constitution says; much less the historical context in which it was created.
… and health care for all …
except for the 100 + entities that have filed waivers and received them 🙂
It wasn’t three-fifths of a person; it was three-fifths of the slave population.
Yes. These last three paragraphs of a January 9, 2003 essay by the late great columnist Joseph Sobran resonate with me.
Begin Sobran Excerpt
The real Lincoln is much more complex and interesting than the storybook Lincoln. Whether or not you like or approve of him is not the historian’s concern; first you have to understand him as he actually was, not as you would wish him to be. This can be offensive to modern pieties and prejudices; one Republican politician lumped me among “assassins of Lincoln’s character” for quoting Lincoln’s own words on the desirability of transporting “free colored persons” outside the United States! Removing free Negroes from this country was one of Lincoln’s chief passions, yet many biographies of him mention this fact only glancingly, if at all. Lincoln must remain an icon of whig history, even if it means distorting his life and American history itself.
True history has much to teach us, but not if we approach the subject expecting it to yield pre-packaged “lessons” that are really nothing more than our own preconceptions. The past is full of surprises, often disillusioning. And this is one of the great values of studying history. Sometimes you’re not quite sure what its lessons are, but they don’t always confirm what you wanted to believe.
Yet there is an austere joy in facing the past as it really was, in letting it change your mind, in giving up cherished generalizations. If you can bear to do all this, the study of history will give you gifts you couldn’t have imagined.
End Sobran Excerpt
Since I sent the stuff of Frederick Douglas speech on the subject and explanation…
except that was about how an article mentioned 180 degrees from the truth of its history.
if one is interested you can read what he said
teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1128
and do note how much better educated and able to talk this ex slave is compared to modern progressive and liberally educated Americans of today.
there is a VERY interesting pdf available here from Yale: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/canons1.pdf
Thank you, Joseph. This is probably the thing about this whole exercise that bothers me most, the notion that anyone, anywhere introduced into the Constitution the idea that a slave was held to be 3/5 of a person–it’s just a perversion of the perfectly legitimate Missouri Compromise. It’s a lie. The first time I ever heard it was back in, oh, maybe the 1970s or ’80s, from Jesse Jackson. It was a slur intended to make the Founders look like racist bastards, and to belittle our country because of the conditions of its founding. Counting 3/5 of a population for representational and taxation purposes is not remotely the same thing as saying any individual is 3/5 of a human being. I wish someone would start calling people on this trope every time it’s used.
As my sister says, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Then again she likes to say, “It is what it is,” a lot.
Great comment art the f!
We’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing with you.
No kidding, great job with the “copy/paste”, I’m sure no one else knows how to do that….
Seriously, keep up the great work.
Regarding the Artfldgr link:
I’m not quite sure how Douglas could claim the text plus current interpretation of the Constitution has more verity than the text and the original intent of the Founders. It’s almost as if there is a claim of divine inspiration by Douglas. The text itself becomes divine and assumes a power to become new things, but this seems to be irrational and magical thinking.
I think it much simpler and reasonable to assert that Taney and the prevalent legal opinion he set forth in Dred Scott was simply wrong because it is not text nor the original intent of the Founders. Abraham Lincoln stated something like this in one of his speeches when he noted that the Constitution made provision for the abolition of slavery.
On the first issue of this post, it was UNWISE to read a sanitized version. The attempt to avoid the truth when one is attempting to set forth a truth is generally not successful because credibility is lost. Further, since the idea was to provoke thought and discussion, the whole 3/5’s compromise could have been set forth not on the defensive, but for the truth which it contains.
Critically important in the calculus: If and when a slave state granted manumission her electoral weight would ‘pop’ up.
Hence, if the Old South feared being swamped by Northern politics all she had to do was free her slaves and gain more House seats pronto.
The ratio of slave to free in some southern states was heavy, so the impact would be substantial.
However, it all happened the very hard way.
There are two ways to look at this.
1) The 3/5 rule would discourage slave ownership as there would be less overall representation per population in slave states.
2) The 3/5 rule would encourage slave ownership as there would be more presentation per voter in slave states – more than if slaves weren’t counted at all.
I believe slavery was incompatible with the original Constitution. The country was doomed to civil war from the start.
I’m also prone to “irrational and magical thinking”. I’m convinced our Founders were inspired, if not directly, then indirectly, by the inspired writings of John Locke, Hugo Grotius, Jean-JacquÂes Burlamaqui, and William Blackstone among others.
I was not aware of the distinction between 3/5ths of the population for certain limited purposes and 3/5ths of a person as a moral judgment. I have read the Document a zillion times and argued much of it, but this is new to me. Thank you.
And thus, if we follow the common view, (untaxed) Indians were not people at all. Which appears absurd on its face since some Indians counted as full persons. The assertion of race prejudice in that case stands on shaky ground.
Or, the First Nations Victim Lobby hasn’t done as well at promoting their grievances.
Curtis,
that was most excellent, and i am going to have to read it a few times. I am guessing you are a lawyer or like law, and my knowledge of Taney is barely in passing so you completely have me at a disadvantage. The Yale pdf was seridipity while locating the douglass speech in a more reputable site than some of them that do pop up.
my glance over of it was that it was interesting in its point and was worth further examination. now with your question, i have some work to do to see if i can address it.
thanks for making me think more 🙂
By-the-way, I realized as I was out running my errands that it wasn’t the Missouri Compromise at all, the Missouri Compromise came much later. It was the eponymous Three-Fifths Compromise.
My point remains unchanged, though.
Thank you Artfldgr; I just read your remark after taking a days break from everything.
Douglas is a treat to read isn’t he? Notice how long paragraphs were back then.
I wonder very much if Douglas would agree with his position if today he could view how so many people view the Constitution like Obama does?
As to there being inspiration in the text? Yes. A thousand times yes. Because it incorporates revealed truth. So I would agree with that, but the text doesn’t work like magic and mean different things in different ages.
Douglas’s states, “I repeat, the paper itself, and only the paper itself, with its own plainly written purposes, is the Constitution.”
But as we can now more plainly view from our vantage point of the future, there is no “plainly written purposes.” Or, stated from my viewpoint, such plainly purposes are vivid only to those who impose the laws of reason and morality upon themselves, those laws which come from God, and more specifically from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Douglas, may have been safe in his age to rely on the text; he probably would not be so sure in our age, the age when the “men who would be gods,” have usurped all authority and turned everything upside down. These men have declared us all insane and our protests only reinforce their commitment to that view. There can be no debate, in their mind, against their views, and even Douglas’s voice would be scorned. The only sacred and inerrant thing is their own pronouncements.
Douglas lived in an age of reason and these men did not exist then in such numbers as they do now. His argument, therefore, put the slavery question on sure footing for that age. His solution, rather than relying on one side of a dispute about whether or not the Founders opposed slavery, was to look at the text and plainly observe no sane and reasonable man could deny it disallowed slavery. But Douglas did not have to account for the breathtaking and comprehensive possibilities allowed to the truly wicked, the Ubermensch, the one who dares to dispose of all rules and morality. Douglas did not have to combat deconstruction, post modernism, and Orwellian thought control.
We have amongst us those who move in total blackness. God gave to man the very lights of heaven for light, for a reference, for guidance. Now we have those who believe in no light, no guidance, no logic, no truth. They believe in nothing. And in nothing they have found something.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=122
Have you seen today’s NYT’s story about this matter and Emory University? A million years ago when I was in high school it was taught as you describe here. Later it started to pushed as another act of white racism. I guess it was to hard to explain to the crowd. You would think some association of scholars of American history would react. No, on second thought I don’t expect that to happen any more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/education/emory-university-president-revives-racial-concerns.html?ref=us