Section 2. Although the Constitution did not refer directly to slaves, it did not ignore them entirely. Article one, section two of the Constitution of the United States declared that any person who was not free would be counted as three-fifths of a free individual for the purposes of determining congressional representation.
The "Three-Fifths Clause" thus increased the political power of slaveholding states. The most recent example came from Tennessee state Rep. Justin Lafferty as part of a debate over whether educators should be restricted in how they teach about systemic racism in American history. His remarks sparked applause from the GOP-controlled House while shocking many Black lawmakers and activists.
Well before Abraham Lincoln. Well before Civil War. And last month, Colorado Republican Rep. The argument has been around for years. In , Oregon state Sen. Scholars interviewed by The Associated Press offer a different take. They see no evidence the constitutional provision was intended to end slavery.
What makes them say that? It was part of a provision of the original Constitution that dealt with how to allot seats in the House of Representatives and dole out taxes based on population. The compromise was the product of negotiations at the Constitutional Convention of They argued that southerners couldn't both insist on holding human beings as property and claim them as people when it suited their interests.
Gouverneur Morris, a delegate from Pennsylvania, pointed up the hypocrisy: "Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them Citizens and let them vote. Are they property? Why then is no other property included? Ironically, then, leaders who were invested in slavery wanted the enslaved to be considered full persons, while those who stood mostly for freedom wanted them not counted at all. As historian Patrick Rael has written, "Each section's interest demanded that it argue against its own principles.
The convention finally arrived at the compromise position that enslaved people would count as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining representation in the House, a formula that was later incorporated into the structure of the Electoral College. The three-fifths ratio itself did not originate in ; it had also been adopted as a basis for taxation at a meeting of the Continental Congress, but did not go into effect because it wasn't ratified by the states.
Get our free weekly newsletter. The Constitution's three-fifths clause helped slaveholders advance their interests on the national stage , at least in the short term, giving them more power than they would have had if the enslaved were not counted at all. It put enslavers in a strong position to garner crucial patronage appointments. It also gave them and their allies the edge in close contests, including the election of , in which slaveholder Thomas Jefferson ultimately won the presidency, and the Indian Removal Act of , which provided for the deportation of Native peoples across the southern states.
Yet the compromise was not powerful enough to guarantee permanent southern dominance, especially in the face of demographic change. In the decades following the nation's founding, slaveholders' grip on federal power was imperiled by larger population growth in the North, and they grew to rely on their strength in the Senate to block legislation that might diminish the protections that slavery enjoyed.
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