Editing Three-fifths Compromise (section)

==Before the Civil War==
By excluding two-fifths of slaves in the legislative apportionment based on population (as provided in the constitution), the Three-fifths Compromise provided reduced representation in the House of Representatives of slave states compared to the free states. Viewed the opposite way, 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 [[President of the United States|presidency]], the [[Speaker of the United States House of Representatives|speakership of the House]], and the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] until the [[American Civil War]].<ref name="slavepower">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rxKvJAGX4o0C|title=The Slave Power|last=Richards|first=Leonard L.|publisher=[[Louisiana State University Press]]|isbn=978-0-8071-2600-4|date=2000}}</ref>{{rp|56–57}} 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 [[United States Senate|Senate]] as well as Electoral College votes.

Historian [[Garry Wills]] has speculated that without the additional slave state votes, Jefferson would have lost the [[1800 United States presidential election|presidential election of 1800]]. Also, "slavery would have been excluded from Missouri ... Jackson's Indian removal policy would have failed&nbsp;... the [[Wilmot Proviso]] would have banned slavery in territories won from Mexico ... the Kansas-Nebraska bill would have failed."<ref name="wills"/>{{rp|5–6}} While the Three-fifths Compromise could be seen to favor Southern states because of their large slave populations, for example, the [[Connecticut Compromise]] tended to favor the Northern states (which were generally smaller). Support for the new Constitution rested on the balance of these sectional interests.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.821/article_detail.asp |title=Three-Fifths Historian |last=Banning |first=Lance |author-link=Lance Banning|publisher=[[The Claremont Institute]] |date=August 31, 2004 |access-date=2008-01-21 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080705170824/http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.821/article_detail.asp |archive-date=July 5, 2008 |journal=[[Claremont Review of Books]]|issue=Fall 2004}}</ref>

===Debate===
Before the Civil War aspects of the Constitution were subject for significant debate by abolitionists.  The [[William Lloyd Garrison|Garrisonian]] view (William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), a prominent American abolitionist best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The Liberator'' of the 1830s) of the Constitution was that it was a pro-slavery document and only completely dividing the Union could satisfy the cause of anti-slavery.

Following a bitter series of public debates including one with [[George Thompson (abolitionist)|George Thompson]],<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=ZmW-F5s-Dk8C&pg=PA173 Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July], p. 173</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ylTDDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA316|title=Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom|first=David W.|last=Blight|date=January 7, 2020|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=978-1-4165-9032-3 |via=Google Books}}</ref> [[Frederick Douglass]] took another view, pointing to the Constitution as an anti-slavery document:

<blockquote>But giving the provisions the very worse construction, what does it amount to? I answer—It is a downright disability laid upon the slaveholding States; one which deprives those States of two-fifths of their natural basis of representation. A black man in a free State is worth just two-fifths more than a black man in a slave State, as a basis of political power under the Constitution. Therefore, instead of encouraging slavery, the Constitution encourages freedom by giving an increase of “two-fifths” of political power to free over slave States. So much for the three-fifths clause; taking it at is worst, it still leans to freedom, not slavery; for, be it remembered that the Constitution nowhere forbids a coloured man to vote.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=gKhJDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA458 The Cambridge Companion to the United States Constitution], Cambridge University Press, p. 458</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=Ic3TAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22the+Constitution+encourages+freedom+by+giving+an+increase+of%22&pg=PA194 Frederick Douglass], p. 194</ref></blockquote>