In the U.S. Constitution, the Three-fifths Compromise is part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3: 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 [italics added].
[5]: 51 [6] The South immediately objected to this formula since it would include slaves, who were viewed primarily as property, in calculating the amount of taxes to be paid.
Let the compromising expedient of the Constitution be mutually adopted, which regards them as inhabitants, but as debased by servitude below the equal level of free inhabitants, which regards the SLAVE as divested of two fifths of the MAN...The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and of property.
Estimating the negroes in the proportion of three fifths, it can scarcely be doubted that the population of the United States will by that time, if it does not already, amount to three millions.During the Constitutional Convention, the compromise was proposed by delegate James Wilson and seconded by Charles Pinckney.
[17][failed verification] After a contentious debate, the compromise that was finally agreed upon—of counting "all other persons" as only three-fifths of their actual numbers—reduced the representation of the slave states relative to the original proposals, but improved it over the Northern position.
In amending the Articles, the North wanted slaves to count for more than the South did because the objective was to determine taxes paid by the states to the federal government.
But representation and taxation go together.... Would it be just to impose a singular burden, without conferring some adequate advantage?By excluding two-fifths of slaves in the legislative apportionment based on population (as provided in the constitution), the Three-fifths Compromise provided reduced representation in the House of Representatives of slave states compared to the free states.
As a result, Southern states had additional influence on the presidency, the speakership of the House, and the Supreme Court until the American Civil War.
Historian Garry Wills has speculated that without the additional slave state votes, Jefferson would have lost the presidential election of 1800.
Following a bitter series of public debates including one with George Thompson,[22][23] Frederick Douglass took another view, pointing to the Constitution as an anti-slavery document: But giving the provisions the very worse construction, what does it amount to?
So much for the three-fifths clause; taking it at is worst, it still leans to freedom, not slavery; for, be it remembered that the Constitution nowhere forbids a coloured man to vote.
After the Reconstruction Era came to an end in 1877, the former slave states subverted the objective of these changes by using terrorism and other illegal tactics to disenfranchise their black citizens, while obtaining the benefit of apportionment of representatives on the basis of the total populations.
[27] The disenfranchisement of black citizens eventually attracted the attention of Congress, and, in 1900, some members proposed stripping the South of seats, related to the number of people who were barred from voting.
Their power allowed them to defeat federal legislation against racial violence and abuses in the South,[29] until overcome by the civil rights movement.
[30][31] A frequent claim made in favor of the former argument is that previous electoral precedent held that one man was equivalent to one vote, and the fact that the compromise explicitly tied personhood to votes provides a basis for an ontological reading of the compromise as implying that enslaved people lacked full personhood.
[32][33][34] Supporters of the statistical argument dispute that ontological considerations were present in the mind of Congress at the time or that the Three-Fifths Compromise had any regard for such notions in its purpose and function.
[35] However, it is generally agreed upon and historiographically reflected that enslaved people had no legal recourse or standing to challenge or participate in any kind of electoral legislation or activities of their own accord, which was confirmed 70 years later by the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford.