Three-fifths Compromise
The Three-fifths Compromise, also known as the Constitutional Compromise of 1787, was an agreement reached during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention over the inclusion of slaves in counting a state's total population. This count would determine the number of seats in the House of Representatives, the number of electoral votes each state would be allocated, and how much money the states would pay in taxes. Slave states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives those states could elect and send to Congress. Free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, since those slaves had no voting rights. A compromise was struck to resolve this impasse. The compromise counted three-fifths of each state's slave population toward that state's total population for the purpose of apportioning the House of Representatives, effectively giving the Southern United States more power in the House relative to the Northern United States. It also gave slaveholders similarly enlarged powers in Southern legislatures; this was an issue in the secession of West Virginia from Virginia in 1863. Free black people and indentured servants were not subject to the compromise, and each was counted as one full person for representation.
The Three-fifths Compromise is in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. It provides:
In 1868, Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment superseded this clause by providing that members of the House of Representatives "shall be apportioned among the several States" by "counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."
Drafting and ratification in the Constitution
Confederation Congress
The three-fifths ratio originated with an amendment proposed to the Articles of Confederation on April 18, 1783. The amendment was to have changed the basis for determining the wealth of each state, and hence its tax obligations, from real estate to population, as a measure of ability to produce wealth. The proposal by a committee of the Congress had suggested that taxes "shall be supplied by the several colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, sex, and quality, except Indians not paying taxes". The South immediately objected to this formula since it would include slaves, who were viewed primarily as property, in calculating the amount of taxes to be paid. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his notes on the debates, the Southern states would be taxed "according to their numbers and their wealth conjunctly, while the northern would be taxed on numbers only".After proposed compromises of one-half by Benjamin Harrison of Virginia and three-fourths by several New Englanders failed to gain sufficient support, Congress finally settled on the three-fifths ratio proposed by James Madison. But this amendment ultimately failed, falling two states short of the unanimous approval required to amend the Articles of Confederation.
Federalist Papers 54–55
Madison explained the reasoning for the 3/5 in Federalist No. 54 "The Apportionment of Members Among the States" as:"We subscribe to the doctrine," might one of our Southern brethren observe, "that representation relates more immediately to persons, and taxation more immediately to property, and we join in the application of this distinction to the case of our slaves. But we must deny the fact, that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. 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...Let the case of the slaves be considered, as it is in truth, a peculiar one. Let the compromising expedient of the Constitution be mutually adopted, which regards them as inhabitants, but as debased by servitude below the equal level of free inhabitants, which regards the SLAVE as divested of two fifths of the MAN...The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and it will not be denied, that these are the proper criterion; because it is only under the pretext that the laws have transformed the negroes into subjects of property, that a place is disputed them in the computation of numbers; and it is admitted, that if the laws were to restore the rights which have been taken away, the negroes could no longer be refused an equal share of representation with the other inhabitants.
Madison later expanded further in Federalist No. 55 "The Total Number of the House of Representatives" as explaining that the 3/5 had to do with estimating the population size of slaves at the time as well:
Within three years a census is to be taken, when the number may be augmented to one for every thirty thousand inhabitants; and within every successive period of ten years the census is to be renewed, and augmentations may continue to be made under the above limitation. It will not be thought an extravagant conjecture that the first census will, at the rate of one for every thirty thousand, raise the number of representatives to at least one hundred. Estimating the negroes in the proportion of three fifths, it can scarcely be doubted that the population of the United States will by that time, if it does not already, amount to three millions.
Constitutional Convention
During the Constitutional Convention, the compromise was proposed by delegate James Wilson and seconded by Charles Pinckney.When he presented his plan for the frame of government to the convention on its first day, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina proposed that for the purposes of apportionment, a "House of Delegates" be determined through the apportionment of "one Member for every thousand Inhabitants 3/5 of Blacks included." The Convention unanimously accepted the principle that representation in the House of Representatives would be in proportion to the relative state populations, but it initially rejected his proposal regarding apportionment of the black population along with the rest of his plan. Delegates opposed to slavery proposed that only free inhabitants of each state be counted for apportionment purposes, while delegates supportive of slavery opposed the proposal, wanting slaves to count in their actual numbers.
The proposal to count slaves by a three-fifths ratio was first presented on June 11, and agreed to by nine states to two with only a brief debate. It was debated at length between July 9 and 13 when it was initially voted down by the members present at the Convention six to four. A few Southern delegates, seeing an opportunity, then proposed full representation for their slave population; most states voted no. Seeing that the states could not remain united about counting the slaves as five-fifths without some sort of compromise measure, the ratio of three-fifths was brought back to the table and agreed to by eight states to two.
Debate
from New York doubted that a direct tax, whose burden on Southern states would be increased by the Three-fifths Compromise, could be effectively leveled on the vast United States. The primary ways of generating federal revenue, he said, would be excise taxes and import duties, which would tax the North more than the South; therefore, the taxation provision was irrelevant, and the compromise would only increase the number of pro-slavery legislators.Northern delegates argued only voters should be accounted for. Southern delegates countered, claiming slaves counted just as much as voters, despite Northerners questioning why slaves should be held by Southerners.
Compromise and enactment
After a contentious debate, the compromise that was finally agreed upon—of counting "all other persons" as only three-fifths of their actual numbers—reduced the representation of the slave states relative to the original proposals, but improved it over the Northern position. An inducement for slave states to accept the Compromise was its tie to taxation in the same ratio, so that the burden of taxation on the slave states was also reduced.A contentious issue at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was whether slaves would be counted as part of the population or would instead be considered property and, as such, not be considered in determining representation of the states in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. The Southern states wanted each slave to count as a full person, whereas the Northern states did not want them to count at all. Elbridge Gerry asked, why should "blacks, who were property in the South", count toward representation "any more than the Cattle & horses of the North"?
Although slave states argued that slaves should be considered persons in determining representation, they wanted them considered property if the new government were to levy taxes on the states on the basis of population. Delegates from states where slavery had become rare argued that slaves should be included in taxation, but not in determining representation.
The proposed ratio was a ready solution to the impasse that arose during the Constitutional Convention. In that situation, the alignment of the contending forces was the reverse of what had been obtained under the Articles of Confederation in 1783. In amending the Articles, the North wanted slaves to count for more than the South did because the objective was to determine taxes paid by the states to the federal government. In the Constitutional Convention, the more important issue was representation in Congress, so the South wanted slaves to count for more than the North did.
Before the Civil War
By excluding two-fifths of slaves in the legislative apportionment based on population, the Three-fifths Compromise, from the South's point of view, reduced the slave states' representation, compared to the free states' representation, in the House of Representatives. From the North's point of view, by including three-fifths of slaves in the legislative apportionment, even though they had no voting rights, the Three-fifths Compromise provided additional representation in the House of Representatives of slave states compared to the free states, if representation had been considered based on the non-slave population. Based on the latter view, in 1793, for example, Southern slave states had 47 of the 105 seats but would have had 33 had seats been assigned based on free populations. In 1812, slave states had 76 seats out of 143 instead of the 59 they would have had; in 1833, 98 seats out of 240, instead of 73. As a result, Southern states had additional influence on the presidency, the speakership of the House, and the Supreme Court until the American Civil War. In addition, the Southern states' insistence on equal numbers of slave and free states, which was maintained until 1850, safeguarded the Southern bloc in the Senate as well as Electoral College votes.Akhil Reed Amar writes, with respect to the 1800 presidential election, "Without the three-fifths bonus that swelled Jefferson's tally... Adams would have won the presidency...." Garry Wills writes that, without the additional slave state votes, "slavery would have been excluded from Missouri... Jackson's Indian removal policy would have failed ... the Wilmot Proviso would have banned slavery in territories won from Mexico... the Kansas-Nebraska bill would have failed." "In January 1840, the House passed a 'hard-gag' rule prohibiting a wide range of anti-slavery petitions from even being allowed to be heard on the House floor or printed in any House publication. The vote for the hard gag was close, 114-108, and the Three-Fifths Clause tipped the balance." The Three-Fifths Clause "tilted the sectional balance from the start and gave all Southerners, including Jefferson, a powerful incentive to extend the slave system."