Editing Three-fifths Compromise (section)

===Federalist Papers 54–55===
Madison explained the reasoning for the 3/5 in [[Federalist No. 54]] "The Apportionment of Members Among the States" (February 12, 1788)<ref name="Federalist 51-60">{{cite web |last1=Madison |first1=James |last2=Hamilton |first2=Alexander |title=Federalist Nos. 51-60 |url=https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60 |website=Library of Congress |access-date=12 February 2023}}</ref> as:

<blockquote>"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.</blockquote>

Madison later expanded further in [[Federalist No. 55]] "The Total Number of the House of Representatives" (February 15, 1788) as explaining that the 3/5 had to do with estimating the population size of slaves at the time as well:<ref name="Federalist 51-60" />

<blockquote>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.</blockquote>