The political elite of the newly created United States of America under the Articles of Confederation determined that the defects of the Articles would hinder the development of a continental empire. The expansion of the original thirteen states westward was of major importance to the founders of the country, who viewed the incredible natural resource abundance of the continent as vital to the new country's growth and future prosperity.
The Articles of Confederation created a ''league of friendship'' among sovereign states. Any westward expansion was subject to the veto of any state that wouldn't benefit from it. This was one major issue that led to the Constitutional Convention that created the U.S. Constitution in 1787. To craft a constitution that would facilitate the geographic and economic growth of the country, all the states had to perceive a benefit in the new political order.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was an essential part of the creation of the new constitution to gain the support of the states of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. People who were enslaved were significant parts of the population of these states.
- Maryland, 32.8% of its population was enslaved.
- Virginia, 41% of its population was enslaved.
- South Carolina, 53.9% of its population was enslaved.
- North Carolina, 33.7% of its population was enslaved.
- Georgia, 37.2% of its population was enslaved.
At the time of the Constitutional Convention, out of a total population of 1.3 million people in these states, over half a million were enslaved people
Property rights were of utmost importance to the Founders, and many of the Founders of the United States "owned" enslaved people and considered them property. The authors of Slave Nation, demonstrate how the move to ban slavery and the slave trade in England was viewed in the American colonies as a direct threat to their property rights and the primary cause of the American Revolution. Even the staunchest anti-slavery delegates to the Convention were defenders of property.
The biggest problem facing the delegates to the Constitutional Convention was the absolute refusal of the large slave states to consider any formation of a national government that interfered in any way with their right to own other human beings as slaves. Gouverneur Morris, a delegate to the Convention from Pennsylvania, called slavery ''a nefarious institution. It was the curse of heaven on the States where it prevailed.''
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In response, southern delegates reminded their fellow delegates that the convention's purpose was to create a political union, not a moral one. John Rutledge, a delegate from South Carolina, argued that ''Religion & Humanity had nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the governing principle with Nations.'' Charles Pickney, also a South Carolina delegate, stated that their state would in no circ*mstances give Congress the authority of ''meddling with the importation of negroes.''.
Every delegate to the Constitutional Convention understood that the human rights of enslaved Africans would be sacrificed for the sake of creating a national union. On June 11, 1787, James Wilson, a delegate from Pennsylvania, and Roger Sherman, a delegate from Connecticut, introduced the idea that became the Three-Fifths Compromise. In doing so, Wilson was recorded by James Madison in his Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 as saying:
''Mr. Wilson did not well see on what principle the admission of blacks in the proportion of three-fifths could be explained. Are they admitted as Citizens? Then why are they not on an equality with White Citizens? Are they admitted as property? Then why is no other property admitted into the computation? These were the difficulties however which he thought must be overruled by the necessity of compromise.''
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The compromise first brought up by Sherman and Wilson was in response to the absolute deadlock in the Convention. The Southern proslavery delegates were afraid that the greater population of white citizens in the North would allow the new national government to either limit or abolish slavery. They argued that enslaved people be counted to determine representation in the national government. Antislavery delegates argued in response that no enslaved people should be included in the computation. The debate was complicated by two notions of how representation in a national government should be calculated: should it be determined by wealth, or by population? Some states used property wealth as the means to determine representation. Should that be the means for the national government as well?
The Three-Fifths Compromise added the words ''direct taxes'' to the equation. At the time, the federal government did not have the power to levy any direct taxes, so its inclusion was a meaningless ''fig leaf'' to antislavery delegates. If three-fifths of the enslaved population were to be counted to determine political representation in the national government, they would also be included in any assessment of wealth considered by the national government levying a direct tax.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was a formidable obstacle to getting the Constitution ratified in the northern states. James Madison, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, wrote The Federalist Papers as a series of articles encouraging the people of New York to ratify the new constitution. In Federalist 54, Madison wrote that African American slaves must be considered as both people and property. Madison's argument demonstrates the mental gymnastics that convention delegates engaged in to get the states where slavery was legal into the union.
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Of enslaved people, Madison wrote:
''The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities; being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects, as property. In being compelled to labor not for himself, but for a master; in being vendible by one master to another master; and in being subject at all times to be restrained in his liberty, and chastised in his body, by the capricious will of another, the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with those irrational animals, which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected on the other hand in his life & in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others; the slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society; not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property. The Federal Constitution therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixt character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character.''
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