I’ll be brief: Why did the Framers choose to count the slaves as three-fifths of a person? I’m know the reasons for the compromise itself, but why the fraction three-fifths?
Thanks.
It was a ploy by the Northern States to decrease the representation in Congress of the Southern States. Because so much of the South’s population was slaves. The Southerners of course wanted each slave to count as a full human being. The Northerners didn’t want to count them at all! That way the Northern delegation in the House of Representatives could outnumber the Southern. So three-fifths was the compromise they reached.
Does anybody have figures on what proportion of Southern States’ populations were slaves in 1787?
I’m not sure if what you said is completely accurate. Furthermore, it doesn’t answer my question.
I believe the Northern states didn’t want the slaves to count for representation but count when apportioning direct taxes, while the Southern states wanted the reverse.
However, my question was: Why the number three-fifths?
Thanks anyway.
I’m don’t know why exactly three-fifths was chosen, but it was a compromise in two ways. Not only was three-fifths of all slaves used for voting purposes, but it was also used for tax purposes. Remember, the federal government didn’t directly tax people at first. They assessed taxes on each state according to their population and let them raise the money as they desired. The northern states wanted the population to be counted as just the number of free persons for voting purposes but as the total number of people for tax purposes. The southern states wanted the population to be counted as just the number of free persons for tax purposes but as the total number of people for voting purposes. The compromise was that they counted them as the number of free persons plus three-fifths the number of slaves for both voting and tax purposes.
Incidentally, the three-fifths compromise was less cold-blooded than it sounds today. While there was a fair proportion of the population even in 1787 that thought slavery was wrong, very few people thought that everybody should vote. In those days, no women could vote. In most states, no one who owned less than a certain amount of property or who failed to pay a poll tax could vote. People voted for a considerably smaller proportion of their lives in any case. The average age at death was in the mid-40’s, so since you didn’t get to vote until you were 21, you only voted for about half of your life. Nowdays, since you can vote at 18 and the average person lives to 76, you can vote for about three-quarters of your life.
I’m guessing that when they had finally hammered out a compromise, three-fifths was the proportion where the Northern and Southern congressional delegations just about evened out. That’s why I asked for figures on the proportion of slave population; it might give a clue as to the math the Framers used.
From Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957,U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1961, p. 12- according to the 1790 Census, the Southern states had 1,271,390 white inhabitants and 689,784 black inhabitants, of whom 657,327 were slaves.
ishmintingas: Here’s data from the 1790 census.
State TOTAL POPULATION NO. OF SLAVES
CONNECTICUT 237,655 2,648
DELAWARE 59,096 8,887
GEORGIA 82,548 29,264
KENTUCKY 73,677 12,430
MAINE 96,643 0
MARYLAND 319,728 103,036
MASSACHUSETTS 378,556 0
NEW HAMPSHIRE 141,899 157
NEW JERSEY 184,139 11,423
NEW YORK 340,241 21,193
NORTH CAROLINA 395,005 100,783
PENNSYLVANIA 433,611 3,707
RHODE ISLAND 69,112 958
SOUTH CAROLINA 249,073 107,094
VERMONT 85,341 0
VIRGINIA 747,550 292,627
3,893,874 694,207
I make it 17.8% slave population with a max in South Carolina of 43%. Virginia, where the political and economic power resided, was 39% slave.
I agree with Wendell Wagner’s comments about the dual nature of the compromise but I have no idea why 60% was the precise figure chosen.
I meant to post this link to the US Historical Census Browser. You can set multiple variables, get some graphs and drill down to the county level for info.
Yeah, ploy by unfair northerners :rolleyes:
The South wanted more power in Congress and the Electoral College by virtue of having large slave populations, but not be charged for them in direct taxes, allow them to vote, or even allow them to have rights (as upheld in Dredd Scott). I don’t think the North was exactly being blindly self-serving in refusing to allow that situation.
Note that slavery was still legal in all the states except for Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. In the rest of the north, slavery was legal but the number of slaves was somewhere around 1% of the population. (Well, except in Delaware, where it was a bit more than 10%. Delaware was disputed territory, I guess, not quite either northern or southern.) The reason that the number of slaves was so small in the North was partly because it wasn’t economically viable. The dispute between the North and the South was not about whether slavery was wrong, and nobody was claiming that the compromise meant that a slave was worth three-fifths of a free person. It was simply an arbitrary formula to balance off the claims of northern and southern states.
Concurring with most of the above posters, some of the Framers who were from the South argued that slaves, even though they didn’t pay taxes, should still be counted for purposes of representation in Congress because they improved the land and could be used to form an army to defend the country.
At least that’s what George Mason thought.
However, the South decided to change its tune when taxes were brought up.
The three-fifths ratio had its origins in a tax proposal of the Congress set up under the Articles of Confederation. As Wendall Wagner pointed out, under the Articles of Confederation the Congress couldn’t tax directly - it apportioned a levy on the states, based on the value of land, and the individual states were then supposed to collect the taxes and remit them. The system had two problems: the states were tardy in collecting the taxes, and there were substantial variations in the way they assessed the value of land.
In 1783 the Congress tried to fix the second problem by a proposal to change the system to a tax based on the respective populations of the states. Although this went nowhere, the Congress used the three-fifths ratio in the proposal, and this seems to have been generally accepted at the Philadelphia Convention four years later. Apparently it was referred to at the time as the “federal ratio,” and seems to have had general support. (Farrand, The Framing of the Constitution, 1913 (facsimile), p. 108.) To find out exactly how the Congress picked on this ratio, you would have to go back to the records of their debates - I don’t know if they are available on-line?
One other point that Farrand makes is that this issue did not divide the delegates at the Philadelphia Convention on north-south lines. In the first vote on the issue of how to allocate the representation in the lower house, 9 voted for the three-fifths rule, and only 2 (New Jersey and Delaware) voted against it (Farrand, p. 75). Subsequent votes on the issue of representation produced somewhat different alignments, depending on the more general debate on how the representation issue in the lower house related to the issue of representation in the upper house, but by and large the division on this issue tended to be along big state and small state lines.
The final vote on the issue of representation in the two chambers (popular enumeration for the lower house, including the three-fifths rule, and state equality in the upper house) was 5-4, along the following lines:
Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina in favour;
Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia against;
Massachusetts not voting, because of an even split between its delegates;
New York, Rhode Island and New Hampshire not present at this point.
One final proposed amendment to have slaves counted the same as free was defeated by a vote of 8-2.
(Farrand, pp. 104 - 105)
I wrote:
> Note that slavery was still legal in all the states
> except for Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. In the rest
> of the north, slavery was legal but the number of slaves
> was somewhere around 1% of the population. (Well, except
> in Delaware, where it was a bit more than 10%. Delaware
> was disputed territory, I guess, not quite either
> northern or southern.)
That was sloppily stated. Let me go back to the chart given by jcgmoi (with some added calculations) (Note: I can’t for the life of me figure out how to do this as a table. Tabs just don’t work for me. Can anyone redo this as a table with everything properly printed out in columns?):
State TOTAL POPULATION NO. OF SLAVES PROPORTION
CONNECTICUT 237,655 2,648 1.1%
DELAWARE 59,096 8,887 15.0%
GEORGIA 82,548 29,264 35.5%
KENTUCKY 73,677 12,430 16.9%
MAINE 96,643 0 0.0%
MARYLAND 319,728 103,036 32.2%
MASSACHUSETTS 378,556 0 0.0%
NEW HAMPSHIRE 141,899 157 0.1%
NEW JERSEY 184,139 11,423 6.2%
NEW YORK 340,241 21,193 6.2%
NORTH CAROLINA 395,005 100,783 25.5%
PENNSYLVANIA 433,611 3,707 0.9%
RHODE ISLAND 69,112 958 1.4%
SOUTH CAROLINA 249,073 107,094 43.0%
VERMONT 85,341 0 0.0%
VIRGINIA 747,550 292,627 39.1%
TOTAL 3,893,874 694,207 17.8%
First, let me note that Kentucky, Maine, and New Hampshire weren’t actually states in 1790. Vermont was disputed land between New Hampshire and New York which was admitted as a separate state until 1791. Kentucky was land claimed by Virginia not admitted as a state until 1793. Maine was a part of Massachusetts not admitted as a separate state until 1820.
So then only in Massachusetts (which included Maine at that point) was slavery illegal. There were no slaves in the disputed territory that’s now called Vermont, probably just by luck. There were insignificant numbers of slaves in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. There was some slavery, but not a huge amount, in New Jersey and New York. Delaware and the territory that’s now called Kentucky seemed to be partly northern and partly southern in character. Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia were clearly southern. It’s interesting to note that you couldn’t have a state that depended mostly on a slave economy without having at least 25% of the population being slaves.
Wendell: Using {code} and {/code} op codes will let you format columnar data. Just replace the braces with brackets.
You may still have to tweak it some to rid yourself of imbedded carriage returns. [note: I tried to fix the errant CRs. -manhattan]
To wit:
State TOTAL POPULATION NO. OF SLAVES PCT
CONNECTICUT 237,655 2,648 1.1
DELAWARE 59,096 8,887 15.0
GEORGIA 82,548 29,264 35.5
KENTUCKY 73,677 12,430 16.9
MAINE 96,643 0 0.0
MARYLAND 319,728 103,036 32.2
MASSACHUSETTS 378,556 0 0.0
NEW HAMPSHIRE 141,899 157 0.1
NEW JERSEY 184,139 11,423 6.2
NEW YORK 340,241 21,193 6.2
NORTH CAROLINA 395,005 100,783 25.5
PENNSYLVANIA 433,611 3,707 0.9
RHODE ISLAND 69,112 958 1.4
SOUTH CAROLINA 249,073 107,094 43.0
VERMONT 85,341 0 0.0
VIRGINIA 747,550 292,627 39.1
Total 3,893,874 694,207 17.8
[Edited by manhattan on 11-20-2000 at 10:46 AM]
Would a moderator please fix that last post by jcgmoi?
New Hampshire was a state in 1790. It was one of the Thirteen Original Colonies. I’ve already seen New Hampshire quarters.
New Hampshire was a state in 1790 (and 1787), but its delegation was late arriving at the Philadelphia Convention. They only got there after the Convention had adopted the compromise on representation. They participated in developing the Constitution from that point on.
Now we’re talking about # of slaves versus # of white people in these states, with substantially higher ratios of slaves:white people in the southern states.
Something interesting to keep in mind is that at the time most law makers were rich, white land owners. They were slave owners as well. By the time the Civil War started up (and I would think the numbers would hold true for a substantial time back) only about 1/3rd of southern citizens owned slaves. The majority of those owning 5 or less.
Aaaaaahhhhhh!!! What I wrote was:
> First, let me note that Kentucky, Maine, and New
> Hampshire weren’t actually states in 1790.
What I meant to write was:
> First, let me note that Kentucky, Maine, and Vermont
> weren’t actually states in 1790.
Wasn’t it obvious that that was what I meant? Hey, you’re supposed to be able to read my mind when I make a mistake.
socialxray wrote:
> Something interesting to keep in mind is that at the time
> most law makers were rich, white land owners.
And how is that different from the way things are now?