From Ismael Hernandez A common historical note... - Breitbart - One Voice Silenced, Millions Awakened

From Ismael Hernandez A common historical note... - Breitbart - One Voice Silenced, Millions Awakened

From Ismael Hernandez

A common historical note found across the board from popular to scholarly literature tells that the Three-fifth Compromise made blacks three-fifths of a human being. Modern racialists use this understanding to say that the very constitution of our country was informed by racial oppression and the very heart of the nation is built on white supremacy.

There is one little problem with the historical note: it is incorrect. Our Constitution never stated that blacks were three-fifths of a human being. Let us briefly examine the history. The constitutional convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 to discuss slavery. A controversy then arose regarding representation in the House. Southern states, wanting to strengthen their pro-slavery coalition, supported counting the slaves when it came to apportion congressional seats and not count them at all on the issue of taxation.

As we can see, the pro-slavery South was the one who wanted to count slaves fully. The reason to want to count them was not to recognize their full humanity but the opposite, to use their numbers to keep them in bondage. If none of the slaves had been counted, the South would have gained only 41 percent of House seats. If all had been counted, it would have been 50 percent; giving the South a virtual control of House decisions. The impasse represented a true dilemma for Northern anti-slavery delegates. Historian Robert A. Goldwin presents the dilemma in clear terms:

"If on the one hand the continuation of slavery was unavoidable, and on the other hand it was a contradiction of the most fundamental principles of the Constitution the delegates wanted and thought necessary, what could principled antislavery delegates do? One effective and consistent thing they could do was try to make the political base of slavery as weak as possible, to diminish its influence and improve the chances of eradicating it sometime in the future."

To that effect, Congressman James Wilson, a Northern abolitionist from Pennsylvania, offered a compromise. Instead of counting the whole number of the AGGREGATE of slaves, only three-fifths were to be added to the rest of the population of a state. The net result of the compromise was the increase of the Southern congressional delegation to 47 percent; denying the South dominance. It is important to notice that the aggregate of free persons of any race was counted in full, including thousands of Northern free blacks. Would it have been better for slaves to have been counted in full? No. Was it possible not to count the slaves at all at that time? No. Would the racialists of today still argue that America is morally tainted if all slaved were counted? No.

If slaves had been counted in full, the argument would be that the South prevailed and counting the slaves demonstrated America’s desire to strengthen the institution of slavery. If they had been ignored in the count, the argument would be that they were considered strictly as property, not even partially human. The great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass understood the alternatives involved and supported the compromise as ‘a downright disability laid upon the slaveholding states’ by depriving them of ‘two-fifths of their natural basis of representation.’ He understood that, at times, trade-off alternatives are wiser, more effective, and profoundly more just than the foolish pursuit of utopian ‘cosmic justice.’

The Founders understood that to have a country, securing the freedom of the slaves at that time was not possible. They, however, managed to create a document with basic principles of justice that would eventually free the slaves. The document, as enacted, called slaves persons, not three-fifths of persons, and it did not mention slaves or slavery. The compromise is not the expression of a country inherently racist and fully committed to the institution of slavery. What this history shows is a country struggling with the scourge of human bondage.

The compromise demonstrates the incommensurability of human goods, and the difficulty in actualizing every possible good at a single given moment. Such reality presented difficult questions to the Founders: How to do justice in a prudential fashion while balancing goods that cannot be hierarchically arranged? How to balance the needs to secure a free country, with the promise of progress and liberty for the many, with the need to exert justice on each particular case, was another.

To resist the temptation of searching for categorical solutions when for the most part we only have access to partial ones is a difficult but essential task of rightful governance. The moral principle of double effect helps us to understand how certain actions that may cause serious harms, even foreseeable ones, as a side effect may be permissible and even desirable under certain circumstances. Was the intended good effect of uniting the country, securing freedom for the many, creating a system that could eventually bring freedom to the slaves, and avoiding war sufficiently desirable to compensate for the unintended bad effect of not eliminating slavery at that historical moment? Yes.