The Truth About the "Three-fifths Clause"

The Truth About the Three-Fifths Clause

Posted on April 26, 2012 at 10:48 pm

If I hear one more time that the Framers of the Constitution hated black people, because of they said that black people were "three-fifths of a person", I'll scream.  In fact, the "Three-fifths Clause" came about because the Framers were doing just what we want today's polarized legislators to do: compromise.

“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 bond to Service for a Term of Years [i.e., indentured servants], and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons [i.e., slaves].”   U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 2.

The “Three Fifths Clause” of the Constitution has been falsely interpreted as dehumanizing black Americans.  In fact, this clause is not about black and white, but free and enslaved.  The history of the Constitutional Convention shows that this clause is not about the relative worth of black persons but rather a determination of whether slaves should count for purposes of congressional representation.

Free black Americans existed long before the Constitution was written.  The first Africans brought into captivity to colonial Virginia in 1619 became indentured servants, like the white indentured servants who were common in early America.  The first Census in 1790 showed a population of about four million Americans.  Nineteen percent of Americans were black and about 13 percent of those black Americans were free.  (University of Washington, BlackPast.org)  Free blacks were citizens and voted in most Northern states and Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina until the early 1800s.

The proposed Constitution allowed one representative to Congress for each 30,000 inhabitants in a state, in contrast to the Continental Congress, where each state had an equal vote.  The initial suggestion during the 1787 Constitutional Convention was that representation be based on a count of all free men.  However, slaves accounted for more than half the population in some Southern States.  Despite slaves having been taxed as property, slaveholders wanted to count slaves as if they were free inhabitants (i.e., “whole persons”), thus increasing the South’s representation in Congress.  Turning the tables on the slaveholders, Northern abolitionists argued that if the South could count slaves, then the North should be able to count livestock for purposes of representation.  The Northern abolitionists further reasoned that the South could always import more slaves to increase its representation in Congress and essentially be rewarded for having more slaves.   

To resolve the issue, a liberal Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson, considered by many to be the most learned of the Framers of the Constitution, proposed the three-fifths clause as a necessary compromise to gain the South’s support for the new Constitution.  The three-fifths of a vote provision applied only to slaves, not to free blacks in either the North or South.  Thus, the much-maligned clause actually benefitted the abolitionists and the slaves by limiting the pro-slavery States’ representation in Congress.