A Slave to Convention

Both Jesse Jackson Jr. and the New York Times (among others) have accused the Republicans of being racists because they did not include Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 in the reading of the Constitution at the opening of the House of Representatives yesterday. This part of the original Constitution, which was repealed by the 13th amendment (1865 -- two years after the Emancipation Proclamation) and therefore removed from the Constitution, states that slaves (read blacks) were to be counted as 3/5ths of a person when determining a state’s representation in Congress and tax distribution.

Now this part of the Constitution has been portrayed by many as being racist when it was, in fact, exactly the opposite. The Southern states wanted slaves to be counted in full to determine each state’s representation in Congress (which would have given them more Representatives and more power). The Northern states objected and claimed that, since slaves were chattel and couldn’t vote that they shouldn’t be counted at all … claiming that, if this was permitted, the Northern states should be able to include their chattel (horses, cows, tables, chairs, etc.) as counting toward the number of Representatives that they could send to Congress. The abolitionists went even further saying that slaves could be counted only if they had been freed by their masters (see three-fifths compromise).

So, in order to get the Constitution ratified, a compromise was reached at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, wherein slaves were counted as 3/5ths of a person to determine the population of a state to enumerate how many Congressmen they could elect … meaning Southern states would have fewer Representatives and thus less power. One might understand that Jesse Jackson Jr. might not know the details of this 3/5ths Compromise, but the New York Times, with all its august egg-head scholars, should know better. I guess one might use this arm-waving pontification by the NY Times as a perfect example of demagoging (see demogogy).