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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Were Our Founding Fathers Racist? The Slaves are 3/5ths of a Person- Debate


Many in the progressive world, believe that our founding fathers were racist. As their evidence they point to Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution:
“ 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 bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
To the liberals, the 3/5th figure is an indication that our founding fathers were a bunch of racists who thought that the African Slaves were less than human.


The truth is that the founders from the northern colonies  who opposed Slavery, insisted on counting the slaves as less than “full persons.” The reason for the insistence, is to prevent the slave states from getting too many congressman and electoral votes as to dominate the government and prevent Slavery from ever being abolished.


The Slave states wanted their slaves to be counted as a full person so they could dominate the House of Representatives and the Presidency. And the cool part of if for the southern whites is that they would have the benefit of counting the slaves, they would also be able to control the political power of their large numbers as the slaves were not allowed to vote.

The Northern States did not want them counted at all, to prevent the south from getting too powerful. The “three fifths of all other Persons” refers to the slave population as a whole, not to the humanity of each individual.

For those of you who took American History in high school, you might remember something called the Three-Fifths Compromise, originally proposed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania. For those wing-nuts who did not take high school American History, let me suggest you borrow a book, or try Google.

Those who have read the Federalist papers would know the  mindset of the founding fathers were not in favor of the continuation of Slavery, but were instead trying to wean their Southern brethren away from Slavery.
For example in Federalist  #38 Madison justified the constitutional provision allowing slave trading for 20 years because it was an improvement, 
Is the importation of slaves permitted by the new Constitution for twenty years? By the old, it is permitted forever.
In Federalist #42 he says
It were doubtless to be wished, that the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves had not been postponed until the year 1808, or rather that it had been suffered to have immediate operation. But it is not difficult to account, either for this restriction on the general government, or for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed. It ought to be considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever, within these States, a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period, it will receive a considerable discouragement from the federal government, and may be totally abolished, by a concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic, in the prohibitory example which has been given by so great a majority of the Union. Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren! Attempts have been made to pervert this clause into an objection against the Constitution, by representing it on one side as a criminal toleration of an illicit practice, and on another as calculated to prevent voluntary and beneficial emigrations from Europe to America. I mention these misconstructions, not with a view to give them an answer, for they deserve none, but as specimens of the manner and spirit in which some have thought fit to conduct their opposition to the proposed government.
Ben Franklin,  freed his slaves and was a key founder of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Alexander Hamilton was opposed to slavery and, with John Jay and other anti-slavery advocates, helped to found the first African free school in New York City. Jay helped to found the New York Manumission (literally voluntary freeing of slaves) Society and, when he was governor of New York in 1798, signed into law the state statute ending slavery as of 1821.

When Constitution signer William Livingston heard of the New York society he, as Governor of New Jersey, wrote them, offering:
“I would most ardently wish to become a member of it [the society in New York] and… I can safely promise them that neither my tongue, nor my pen, nor purse shall be wanting to promote the abolition of what to me appears so inconsistent with humanity and Christianity… May the great and the equal Father of the human race, who has expressly declared His abhorrence of oppression, and that He is no respecter of persons, succeed a design so laudably calculated to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.”
Washington was a paradox, he was a slave owner hated slavery
“I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery].”-George Washington
Washington’s successor John Adams did not own slaves and hated the Practice:
“[M]y opinion against it [slavery] has always been known… [N]ever in my life did I own a slave.”-John Adams
Slavery will always be a horrible chapter in American History, but the three-fifths compromise was not. The three-fifths clause was not a measurement of human worth; it was an attempt to reduce the number of pro-slavery proponents in Congress. By including only three-fifths of the total numbers of slaves into the congressional calculations, Southern states were actually being denied additional pro-slavery representatives in Congress and electoral votes for selecting the president.

Now if we could only count progressives as three-fifths of a person for census purposes.
 
This post was originally published back in July, but for some reason, it started to get some traffic today, that's when I discovered that John Hawkins wrote a post called the The 15 Most Popular Political Posts On Linkiest For 2010. The post above was #5, so I thought it worthwhile to share with you folks once again.


 

2 comments:

J. E. Quidam said...

Correction to my last post - there was a reference to race in the Constitution: "Indian". And, using the illogic of the founders-racist argument, the Indians' fraction, 0/5, was even worse than the misunderstood 3/5. I mean, being 0% of a person is even worse than 60%, right? Actually, they were referring to "Indians not taxed", which explains the 0%. I'm sure many of us would opt for being "0%" of a person if we could evade federal taxation! I wonder how many African-Americans (and the rest of us) would give up 40% of our "representation" in the House for a 40% cut in federal taxes. Just sayin'

J. E. Quidam said...

[This is a repeat submission of my first post, which did not make it.] There is a critical point that is usually overlooked when examining the 3/5ths issue: The Constitution originally required that the federal tax burden be allocated to the states in the exact same proportion as representation so, for example, a state with 10% of the Representatives would bear 10% of the taxation.

The essence of the resulting dilemma was that while the anti-slavery states vehemently opposed allowing the slave states to enjoy larger representation in the U.S. House (had all persons been counted), they still insisted that the slave states bear their fair share of the costs of the federal government, thus this fractional compromise. In other words, the slave states wanted to count 100% of the slaves, and the anti-slave states would have preferred to not include them at all! This is in stark contrast to the prevailing idiocy that the 3/5ths rule was intended to express racism. Moreover, without that compromise there would have been no United States of America; instead, there probably would have been two nations formed with slavery very safely protected within the confederacy of southern states.

For a more detailed discussion of this point, read Appendix 1 of "The Minimum and Maximum Size of the U. S. House of Representatives" which can be downloaded from this page: http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/QHA-04.htm

By the way, the word "slave" does not appear in the Constitution