THE THREE-FIFTHS CLAUSE: PRAGMATIC OR WICKED?

  

Perhaps the most miscommunicated part, misunderstood, and controversial part of the United States Constitution is Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, which reads:

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].

This is the enigmatic Three-Fifths Clause which has been interpreted by liberals and conservatives alike as the Constitution, until the addition of the Thirteenth Amendment, ascertained the legal status of black slaves as only three-fifths of a person.  Undoubtedly, the clause is referring to slaves but not as to their legal status of personhood, but to how they were to be counted in each state’s population for the number of representatives in the House of Representative and for federal taxes.

Rather than being wicked, this clause was a pragmatic barrier against largely slave-owning states using their large slave populations to booster their numbers in the House of Representatives and in the number of electors to choose the president. And this compromise in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was part of a larger debate of how the Congress would be structured.

Cross-current with the slave debate was the issue of large states and small states. Obviously, the smaller states did not want to lose too much status and influence with the new national government so the Senate would have two senators from each state regardless of population and the House of Representatives based on the population of each state. To prevent the largely Southern slave states having too much influence, the Three-Fifths Compromise was introduced and quickly adopted at the convention.

The foundation of this compromise was in the Confederation Congress as part of an amendment proposed in 1783 to change the basis for determining the wealth of each state from real estate to population for national tax obligations. Southern congressmen objected to this new proposed tax base would include slaves. After debating one half and three fourths proposals, the Congress settled on a three-fifths ratio, but it ultimately failed to pass.  Nevertheless, it was the three-fifths ratio that surfaced in the debates in 1787.

To ascertain whether this clause was successful in preventing undue Southern influence in the House of Representatives, I created four tables based on the Federal censuses of 1790, 1800, 1810, and 1820. Each table lists the combined populations of northern states and southern states with their combined slave populations. Additionally, I included the percentage of slaves in the total populations of each region. To ascertain the 3/5 adjustments for each region I subtracted 40 percent of the slave population from the total population. I have also calculated the Southern Power Index (SPI) after each census by dividing the two regional populations and with the Northern Power Index being constantly maintained at 1.

Based upon this data, one can see that Southern power was blunted in the House of Representatives and would continue to do so. Northern states increased in population while lowering the real numbers of their slaves. Southern states also increased in population but the percentage of slaves of the total population in these states remained consistently constant.

The United States would become a continental power, but it was limited in the type of climate and land friendly to the cotton economy which needed slaves. The last grasp of Southern power was the Kansas-Nebraska controversy in the 1850s.

The clause was not successful in helping elect a president until 1860. Of the fifteen presidents before Abraham Lincoln, I count thirteen as either slaveowners, friendly to slaveowners, or unable/unwilling to upset the system. I only consider John Adams and John Quincy Adams truly opposed to slavery but lacking the power to end it as Lincoln did.

Considering the narrow focus of the Three-Fifths Clause I believe it was a successful pragmatic compromise. Our Constitution does indeed recognize the reality of slavery but had in place this mechanism for helping to end it. But this clause was not alone in this endeavor. Two other factors were also in place-

1.     The constitutional ban on the slave trade after 1808. While the slave trade from Africa to the United States did continue, it did so illegality and found itself at the mercy of British Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron and eventually by the United States Navy after the War of 1812.

2.     The Northwest Ordinance passed by the Confederation Congress in 1787 even as the Constitutional Convention was meeting. This ordinance was perhaps the greatest anti-slavery legislation passed before the Civil War. The law, among other notable features, prohibited slavery in the newly established Northwest Territory which included what is now Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The Northwest Ordinance was upheld by the new United States Congress in 1789

 

Our Founders were flawed men, with their own passions and prejudices, biases and temptations. Yet morally, many, if not most of them, understood slavery to be wrong. Realistically, however, they could not “die on the hill” of ending slavery and keep intact our fragile constitutional republic. Brilliantly, nevertheless, they played the long game to end slavery and uphold our cherished values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by trusting that “we the people” would ultimately find the way that they could not,

 

 

Table 1- 1790 CENSUS                          SPI: 0.89

REGION	POPULATION	SLAVES	% SLAVES
North (8 states)	1,880,564	40,086	2.1
North 3/5 Adjustment	1,864,530 counted for federal representation & taxation
South (7 states)	1,926,677	654.121	34.0
South 3/5 Adjustment	1,665,019 counted for federal representation & taxation

 

Table 2- 1800 CENSUS                          SPI: 0.96

REGION	POPULATION	SLAVES	% SLAVES
North (8 states)	2,294,257	36,080	1.6
North 3/5 Adjustment	2,279,825 counted for federal representation & taxation
South (8 states)	2,534,688	851,532	33.6
South 3/5 Adjustment	2,194,075 counted for federal representation & taxation

 

Table 3- 1810 CENSUS                          SPI: 0.78

REGION	POPULATION	SLAVES	% SLAVES
North (10 states)	3,717,483	27,081	0.7
North 3/5 Adjustment	3.706,651 counted for federal representation & taxation
South (8 states)	3,319,126	1,103,700	33.3
South 3/5 Adjustment	2,877,646 counted for federal representation & taxation

 

 

Table 4- 1820 CENSUS                          SPI: 0.68

REGION	POPULATION	SLAVES	% SLAVES
North (12 states)	5,643,522	19,108	0.3
North 3/5 Adjustment	5,635,879 counted for federal representation & taxation
South (12 states)*	4,442,493	1,509,904	34.0
South 3/5 Adjustment	3,838,531 counted for federal representation & taxation

*Includes Missouri which officially became s state in 1821