“the Civil War was fought to preserve the Union and reinforce the notion that blacks would never again be relegated to a value of 3/5 of a human being.” The 3/5ths adoption insured that the South would not have a majority vote in elections and representation. If anything the North designated “blacks as 3/5ths of a human being”!!!! The winners always get to re-write history but if you look hard enough you will find that what I am saying is true.
I'm sure if you had run that sentence by any Union soldier in 1861 you would have gotten a look of bewilderment. They weren't fighting for the rights of blacks--abolition wasn't even an announced war aim until Sept. 1862.
The 3/5 rule goes back to the Articles of Confederation period when each state had equal representation in Congress (one vote) so the relative population did not matter. It was originally a formula for assessing the states for their contributions to the general government, and reflected the belief that slaves didn't work as hard as free persons...the output of a slave was set at 60% of the output of a free person. When the formula was adopted in the Constitution for determining representation in the House of Representatives, it applied only to enslaved persons--free blacks were given the same weight as other free persons.