Which of the following was a direct outcome of the three-fifths compromise?
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[Note: this op-ed is not by Constitutional Accountability Center, and does not represent our views of the three-fifths compromise, but is on our website because the author refers to us directly. For our response to this piece, see the article published in the same outlet–the San Antonio Express-News– by CAC Civil Rights Director David Gans, here.] Show Constitution Day is today. The U.S. Constitution is a document that evolves with the times. Constitutional inadequacies and societal injustices are challenged, and social progress is the result. Instead of reverence for this brilliant document that ensures our rights, it is attacked by some as a severely flawed and even a racist contract. One of the most widely used means to defame the Constitution is to manipulate perception of the three-fifths compromise. Agenda-driven academicians and committed ideologues routinely state the U.S. Constitution only recognizes blacks as three-fifths of a person. No context is given. This often-repeated falsehood foments disrespect of the Constitution and contempt for the founders who authored it. The U.S. Constitution does not relegate blacks to “three-fifths of a person” status. Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states: “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.” The “other Persons” were slaves. The 1787 Constitutional Convention addressed the apportionment in the House of Representatives and the number of electoral votes each state would have in presidential elections based on a state’s population. The Southern states wanted to count the entire slave population. This would increase their number of members of Congress. The Northern delegates and others opposed to slavery wanted to count only free persons, including free blacks in the North and South. Using the logic of the promoters of the “three-fifths of a person” interpretation, think of the constitutional ramification had the position of the Northern states and abolitionists prevailed. The three-fifths clause would have been omitted and possibly replaced with wording that stated “other Persons” would not be counted for apportionment. The Constitution, then, would be proclaiming slaves were not human at all (zero-fifths). This is an illogical conclusion and was certainly not the position of Northern delegates and abolitionists. Counting the whole number of slaves benefited the Southern states and reinforced the institution of slavery. Minimizing the percentage of the slave population counted for apportionment reduced the political power of slaveholding states. Denigration of the Constitution is not restricted to committed demagogues. San Antonio’s U.S. District Judge Fred Biery addressed the Austin Bar Association on Law Day 2012. His speech focused on various social injustices in America’s past and how attorneys righted these wrongs. Biery used the example of then-recent Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III. The judge asserted that in 1787 when the Constitution was ratified, Griffin’s “ancestors … were counted only as three-fifths of a human being.” Biery is alarmingly ignorant. Or worse, he is consumed with the need to promote and further a personal creed. There are other troubling aspects of the lifetime judge’s declaration. Biery’s speech was published in San Antonio Lawyer after he addressed the bar association. Didn’t any of the attorneys at the meeting who actually understood the meaning of that portion of the Constitution advise Biery of his misrepresentation? David Gans is the director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights and Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center, a think tank and law firm. The Express-News published a column by him on constitutional requirements in the past year (“Count all people, as Constitution requires, March 10) in which he stated that “someone who was enslaved would be counted as three-fifths of a person” for the purpose of determining representation in Congress. The magnitude of this constitutional illiteracy is not restricted to those on the political left. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice routinely stated in her speeches, “In the original U.S. Constitution, I was only three-fifths of a person.” In 1787, the founders were attempting to form a union and preserve the nascent United States. This imperfect compromise allowed for preservation of the republic while also confronting the moral and systemic evils of slavery. Erroneous and distorted interpretations of the Constitution only intensify the societal divide in America. The ratification of the United States Constitution was the subject of intense debate between 1787 and 1789. One particularly controversial issue was the Three Fifths Compromise, which settled how enslaved people would be counted for purposes of representation and taxation. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia had agreed that three-fifths of the slave population would be counted for representation purposes, thus giving southern states greater representation in the House while remaining exempt from paying taxes on the other two-fifths of the slave population. Although the authors of this article from 1788 focus on the second aspect of the Compromise, it was the issue of representation in Congress that proved to have far greater consequences. Southern states gained disproportionate power in determining issues (particularly those related to slavery) while denying the vote to vast segments of their populations. In the first place, as direct taxes are to be apportioned according to the numbers in each state, and as Massachusetts has none in it but what are declared free men, so the whole, blacks as well as whites, must be numbered; this must therefore operate against us, as two fifths of the slaves in the southern states are to be left out of the numeration. Consequently, three Massachusetts infants will increase the tax to equal to five sturdy full grown negroes of theirs, who work every day in the week for their masters, saving the Sabbath, upon which they are allowed to get something for their own support. We can see no justice in this way of apportioning taxes. Neither can we see any good reason why this was consented to on the part of our delegates. Source | Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist, vol. 6 (University of Chicago Press, 1981), 256. What is a direct outcome of the ThreeUnder the compromise, every enslaved American would be counted as three-fifths of a person for taxation and representation purposes. This agreement gave the Southern states more electoral power than they would have had if the enslaved population had been ignored entirely.
What was the result of the ThreeThe delegates to the Constitutional Convention finally agreed to the Three Fifths Compromise, that slaves should be counted at three fifths of their real number (every 5 slaves would be counted as 3).
What was the result of the 3/5 clause?The United States Constitution's infamous “Three-Fifths Clause” dictated that for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives African-American slaves were to be counted as less than full persons.
What was the main purpose of the ThreeThe three-fifths compromise was an agreement reached by members of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It provided for the enumeration of 3/5ths of the enslaved population in a state for the purpose of determining the number of Representatives in Congress each state would have.
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