Why Three-Fifths Was Worse Than One, Or None
Apropos of this item from Andrew Sullivan’s blog: I’ve heard this rejoinder from other people, that the 3/5 compromise was “better” than if the Constitution had counted slaves fully, and thereby given greater representation to the slave states, and that therefore people who point to it as especially egregious evidence that our founding document was tainted by white supremacy have it backwards. But this rejoinder is really a non-sequitur.
Slaves were not the only persons in the United States at the time who did not have the right to vote. Women and children, most obviously, could not vote, but were nonetheless counted for purposes of representation. And that makes sense; if you argued, today, that children should not be counted for purposes of apportionment because they can’t vote, the argument would seem absurd. Indeed, to the extent that there is debate these days about apportionment and the census, the argument is that non-citizens, or at least illegal immigrants, should not be counted for apportionment purposes, because although they plainly do have interests, the national interest in having them leave the country is so strong that their interests should not be virtually represented (as those of children are) through giving greater voting strength to the citizens in their area. (I don’t have much sympathy for that argument, but that’s the argument.)
Had slaves been granted zero weight for apportionment purposes, that would have weakened the South practically and would plainly have said that slaves are not in a condition analogous to women and children – full human beings who are nonetheless dependent on other human beings for, among other things, representation. That would, obviously, have been optimal from an anti-slavery perspective.
Had slaves been granted full weight for apportionment purposes, that would have strengthened the South practically, which would have been very negative from an anti-slavery perspective. But it would also have implied that slaves were, indeed, analogous to women and children – fully human, but dependent on others because of their condition. This was the official ideology of the slave power, but essential features of the slave system – most notably the fact that slaves were not merely owned but traded, which made normal family life among slaves a legal impossibility – were always incompatible with any true recognition that slaves were fully human. Any such formal recognition, then, would be an ideological victory against slavery.
The three-fifths compromise was, from a purely practical perspective, a positive inasmuch as it weakened the South relative to the North. But it was hugely negative from an ideological perspective because it established in America’s founding document that slaves were not analogous to women and children – that they were something less than full (nonvoting) members of the community. Cattle, free children and slaves all could not vote. Cattle had no representation, free children had full representation, and slaves had partial representation. That’s a pretty perfect expression of the ideology of white supremacy that was a necessary component of the slave system as practiced in the United States. Which is precisely what it is understood to be today, and precisely why it is considered so offensive in retrospect.
The problem with the way many people bring up the 3/5ths rule in current political debates is that they seem to be implying that the rule should have been that a slave counts as one person. As you’ve explained, the better thing based on immediate consequences would have been not to count slaves at all, though of course you’re right that this would have been symbolically abhorrent. I totally agree with you about the symbolic significance, but I’m not sure that one more symbolically abhorrent thing about the slave system would have mattered much. I don’t understand why you call these observations a “non-sequitur,” considering that you seem to understand the situation perfectly well aside from that.
— jaltcoh.blogspot.com · Jan 25, 04:32 PM · #
Well, I probably shouldn’t have said “non-sequitur.”
The objection is to the symbolic significance of the compromise, so if you deem the symbolism meaningless then, yeah, there’s nothing to object to. I was just trying to explain why, symbolically, 3/5 is worse than either 0 or 1, which is precisely why it upsets people.
— Noah Millman · Jan 25, 05:08 PM · #
I actually agree with the non-sequitur comment. Your last paragraph is really all that needs to be said:
“The three-fifths compromise was, from a purely practical perspective, a positive inasmuch as it weakened the South relative to the North. But it was hugely negative from an ideological perspective because it established in America’s founding document that slaves … they were something less than full (nonvoting) members of the community.”
Andrew Sullivan’s commenter is addressing what is ultimately a circular argument: it was indeed better for the South to have less representation. But why was that important? …Because the South supported slavery! If the whole country had agreed that slaves should be treated as equals from the start, “the South” as an entity to weaken wouldn’t really have existed in a meaningful way.
— GeoffB · Jan 25, 10:13 PM · #
Native Americans were not counted. They got 0 for representation, even though they were present in most of the states. Was that really better from an ideological perspective? You should read some of the 19th language that lumps them together with the wild animals, as if they were not human.
I don’t think either the 3/5 count for African-American slaves or the 0 count for Native Americans “established” anything about the status of either group. Nowadays it’s just something for ignoramuses like Al Gore to get snarky about when denigrating the U.S. constitution. But I suppose his misunderstanding helps him feel superior to those who honor the limits placed on us by the constitution, just like slaveowners and other Euro-Americans had a need to feel superior to those whom they were ruling and conquering.
— The Reticulator · Jan 26, 03:14 AM · #
For the record, I feel superior to Al Gore and to others who snark about the 3/5 count and thereby think they are denigrating the Constitution.
— The Reticulator · Jan 26, 03:28 AM · #
The Constitution said “three-fifths of all other persons,” which means that slaves are persons. So symbolically and linguistically, which is what you are talking about, I don’t think that provision denigrated slaves.
The abolitionist critique of the Constitution is a powerful one, but the straight-forward solution was the Thirteenth Amendment; progressivism is really kind of a non-sequitur solution to the slavery-related defects in the original document.
— Aaron · Jan 26, 05:53 AM · #
It is highly likely that without the 3/5ths compromise the United States would not have come into existence. The various state representatives played a sort of game of chicken, recognizing that counting slaves as whole persons for the purpose of representation would greatly benefit slave states (a third of Virginia’s population at the time were slaves), but that not counting them would lead to the slave states refusing to ratify, or perhaps even pass, the Constitution. There is much more nuance to the treatment and thinking of slavery at the time, but economic and political considerations were primary. The symbolism you fret about was, at the time, at best a minor concern among those opposed to slavery (Adams, the Quakers, etc.).
— steve walsh · Jan 26, 12:43 PM · #
@GeoffB:
A circular argument? Only if you think, as Mr. Millman apparently does, that only symbolism matters. Now, “from a purely practical perspective” the 3/5 compromise greatly incentivized southern slaveholders to bring millions more Africans into slavery and the associated suffering, established a southern dominance of our Congress and Presidency that advanced a pro-slavery agenda at the national level, helped spread the institution of slavery into the western territories, and generally worsened a boil on our nation until it was lanced in a war that killed more Americans than any other in history – but hey, everything would have been honkey-dorey if they had just counted as full people in the Constitution.
— Jeremy · Jan 26, 02:58 PM · #
The symbolism you fret about was, at the time, at best a minor concern among those opposed to slavery
At best. I do a lot of reading in the history of the early Republic. While my emphasis is on relations with Native Americans and on the Old Northwest, it’s pretty hard not to run into the topic of slavery. I’m not saying it never happened, but I have never, ever, come across public or private rhetoric, private or public letters, newspaper articles (I love reading old newspapers from the 1820s-1850s) or anything in which there was a 3/5 reference in the style you might get nowadays from your average sneering, sniggering, semi-educated leftist: “After all, they are just 3/5 of a person.” Or anything that puts down southern racists or other racists for thinking of slaves in that particular sense. Symbolism of all kinds, yes, but not symbolism that refers explicitly or implicitly to the 3/5 rule.
But now that Mr. Millman has brought it up, I’ll start keeping an eye out for it.
— The Reticulator · Jan 26, 03:18 PM · #
Indeed. Free blacks were counted as “full persons”. My reading of that time in history, likely not as extensive as yours, finds the arguments to be largely absent racial animus as we understand that concept today. In the late 18th Century there was broad and growing acceptance of the moral wrongness of slavery, even among many that owned slaves, most prominent, to me, being Thomas Jefferson. In the same year of the Constitution, the US passed a law abolishing the African slave trade. Nearly all the discussion from that time that I have read about abolishing slavery focused on the economic, political, and social impact it would have on the slave states, not whether or not slaves we fully human (although there was some of that on the margins).
— steve walsh · Jan 26, 04:21 PM · #
The Three-Fifths compromise had one aim—to punt the issue of slavery down the road so everybody else at the time (or at least the affluent white guys who made up most of the Constitutional Convention) could get on with the business of having the more unified nation they wanted (albeit only temporarily, as it turned out), in contrast to what they had under the Articles of Confederation. The same goes for the 1808 slave importation ban. That is it. It was pure practical politics.
That being said, it is plain that “the Founders” (to the extent we can collectively ascribe these compromises to them) did not view slaves as anything remotely like their “equals”. In fact, if they had, then the Three-Fifths Compromise is even more abhorrent than Al Gore might hold: they would agree to keep millions of their equals in chains, indefinitely, just to replace the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution? Talk about your deals with the devil—that would have to rank right up there with Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in its calculated cruelty.
I think the most benign of view of their actions (and by this I mean the abolitionists who consented to the Compromise) is to say that they were men of their time, who were among the more “advanced” in their views towards humanity, yet nevertheless still held deep prejudices that today we would find abhorrent. I think that is actually the only way you can view them without making them completely conscienceless moral monsters.
— KG · Jan 26, 04:30 PM · #
If anyone here would like a more complete account of the 3/5ths compromise, the political bargaining behind it, and other related issues (an important one being whether slaves would be taxable as property), I recommend Lawrence Goldstone’s book “Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution.” Very interesting story.
— HAL 90089 · Jan 26, 05:06 PM · #
I’m in class so not sure I can eloquently argue my point. I still think it there was a slight benefit to giving slaves only 3/5 representation from an anti-slavery standpoint because the extra power granted to southern states from full representation of slaves would have been used to maintain or increase oppression of the slaves. Whereas, children would be relatively unaffected by increased representation, or even less, because it is hard to believe that the southern states would have passed any legislation that would negatively impact children
— James · Jan 26, 05:28 PM · #
I think that is actually the only way you can view them without making them completely conscienceless moral monsters.
People with operating moral consciences have done terrible things to other people and have held terrible prejudices throughout history. They don’t have to be conscienceless to do it.
Some day people will be tempted to describe those of olden times who put their kids in day care or who allowed them to spend an hour or two per day of the best years of their lives on school buses as “completely conscienceless moral monsters.” Such practices are a moral atrocity to be sure, but the people who do it are not conscienceless.
— The Reticulator · Jan 26, 05:34 PM · #
I didn’t saying holding a prejudice made you conscienceless. In fact, on this topic, I said the opposite. It was only their prejudices (which I said were abhorrent by modern standards) allowed them to make such compromise. The fact that they were abolitionists at that time in history speaks well to their moral conscience. The fact they could make such a compromise, on the other hand, pretty clearly signals they did not view slaves as their “equals”. Do you really dispute this?
Day care…blah blah blah. Really? Form slavery to day care?
Whatever.
— KG · Jan 26, 05:59 PM · #
Do you really dispute this?
It’s a good question, but I am not sure that the issue of equality had anything to do with it. The greater horror to these people was the breaking up of the union and the loss of everything they had spent a decade fighting and bleeding for. I am not sure whether or not they would have been willing to sell out their “equals” in order to preserve those gains and avoid the chaos and fighting that would come with disunity. I suppose a slight point in your favor is what they were willing to do with tories — confiscate their property, kill and maim them, treat them as scum of the earth, but not enslave them. But I don’t know if that counts as treating them as equals. Like I say, it’s an interesting question.
As for the day care example, I intentionally picked something that didn’t come with a lot of emotional baggage for most people — an example of how for most people things just are the way they are.
— The Reticulator · Jan 26, 06:27 PM · #
The Tories were enemies in a war/revolution. Enemies get killed, get their property confiscated, etc., in such affairs If you think the American Revolution was a bad idea, fine, these things were unjustified. Otherwise, the American Revolution was conducted—by the rebels—about as civilly as any such revolution has ever been done. Cf. France a few years later, or the English Civil War, a century before. And we won’t even discuss the 20th century….
I am pretty sure that the abolitionists did not view slaves as their enemies. I am just as sure they did not view them as their equals, either. It seems evident to me, but if you think it is still an open question, OK, we disagree.
— KG · Jan 26, 07:38 PM · #
Oh, no question the most of the 18th century abolitionists didn’t view slaves as their equals, and that even the abolitionists were deeply prejudiced. I only question whether that had anything to do with why the 3/5 compromise was accepted.
— The Reticulator · Jan 26, 08:30 PM · #
It is not the “why”—I gave the “why” at the beginning of my first post (see above). But is what allowed them to compromise. I don’t believe the abolitionist Founders could have agreed to such a compromise otherwise—it would have made them monstrous, to agree to allow those they viewed as their equals to languish in chains, with no end in sight, simply to get a political deal done, even one as momentous as replacing the AOC with the Constitution.
— KG · Jan 26, 08:38 PM · #
OK, now you’ve accurately identified where we disagree. I think that even if the abolitionist founders had been as free from racial prejudice as, say, native Americans of that era, or as free from racial prejudice as a modern, American leftist thinks he is (but really isn’t) that they still would have gone for the 3/5 compromise to keep the union together. Well, I don’t know that for sure, but I am not at all convinced that they needed to have some residual bigotry in order to let that happen.
If they could have foreseen the changes to the institution of slavery over the next few decades — it went the opposite direction of what some people at the time expected, becoming even more inhumane — I suppose some people might have acted differently at the time.
Keep in mind that the institution of slavery was not a constant. It changed over time. In the U.S. the net change was for the worse in the decades to come. If people in the 1780s could have foretold that, I wonder if they would have acted differently then. I would like to think so, but I don’t know.
— The Reticulator · Jan 26, 10:49 PM · #