Editing Three-fifths Compromise (section)

===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>