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Chapter IV - The Three-fifths Clause and Human Rights
The Three-fifths Clause and Human Rights
Once the problem of equitable representation for small and large states was solved, debate shifted to the question of how the slave population should affect state representation. Humanitarian concerns about slavery itself had no real bearing on the question. "Slavery," Madison's secretary noted, "was merely a distracting question, rather than a compelling moral dilemma." A South Carolina delegate asserted, "Religion and humanity [have] nothing to do with this [slavery question]. Interest alone is the governing principal of nations." For example, Southern interests dictated that slaves be counted as part of the population in calculating the number of representatives. However, while Northern delegates freely allowed slaves to be counted in deciding each state's share of direct taxes, they balked at the notion of considering them equal to free men for purposes of representation. The issue was finally resolved using a formula which had been developed by the Confederation Congress in 1783 for apportioning taxation among the states: population totals would include three-fifths of the number of slaves, In the delegates' judgment this formula seemed reasonable since they considered slaves less efficient producers of wealth than free men.
This three-fifths clause was linked to another clause which allowed Congress to ban the importation of slaves after 1807. In the final version the delegates carefully avoided the repellent word "slavery," a word which would not appear until the Thirteenth Amendment abolished this "peculiar institution" by name in 1865. Thus, in framing the Constitution as in drafting the Declaration of Independence, American political leaders placed national unity above human rights.
Though the delegates hotly debated the slave issue, they considered any discussion of women's political or legal rights irrelevant. However, the rhetoric of the Revolution had moved some women to demand political equality. One outspoken South Carolina Woman asserted: "Men say we have no business, but I won't have it thought that because we are the weaker sex as to bodily strength we are capable of nothing more than domestic concerns. They won't even allow us the liberty of thought and that is all I want." In the end male slaves would receive the vote in 1868 with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, but women of all classes and races would have to wait fifty-one years longer for this same constitutional right.
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