I might be wrong, Frank, but my reading of the text says that freed slaves fall under “the whole Number of free Persons” and thus count as 1, not three fifths.
The three fifths compromise just said slave states shouldn’t get to count slave population to get more representatives. The non-slave states wanted them not to count at all, since they don’t get representation regardless. It’s wild to me that we think of the “three fifths of all other persons” thing as the bad part, rather than the “rich assholes who owned people got more representation than those who didn’t own people because the people they owned counted toward their representative allotments.” After all, the slave owners wanted slaves to count as a full person. The problem, as always, was slavery.
I don’t think it’s that “three fifths” is the only bad part per se, it just gets referenced a lot because it is a really indefensible example of how enslaved people were considered less than a person. So much so that here it is codified as a fraction of a person. Very in your face sort of language.
I might be wrong, Frank, but my reading of the text says that freed slaves fall under “the whole Number of free Persons” and thus count as 1, not three fifths.
The three fifths compromise just said slave states shouldn’t get to count slave population to get more representatives. The non-slave states wanted them not to count at all, since they don’t get representation regardless. It’s wild to me that we think of the “three fifths of all other persons” thing as the bad part, rather than the “rich assholes who owned people got more representation than those who didn’t own people because the people they owned counted toward their representative allotments.” After all, the slave owners wanted slaves to count as a full person. The problem, as always, was slavery.
I don’t think it’s that “three fifths” is the only bad part per se, it just gets referenced a lot because it is a really indefensible example of how enslaved people were considered less than a person. So much so that here it is codified as a fraction of a person. Very in your face sort of language.