The slave holders wanted slaves counted as 5/5 of a constituent.
Counting slaves as a full constituent would have helped slave owners.
Counting them as not a constituent, I.e. 0/5 would be bad for the slavers.
3/5 had nothing to do with personhood. Never use that term when discussing this, use constituent.
I have heard even Condi Rice use this misunderstanding to connote racism of the past.
Only ignorant people think the 3/5 rule had anything to do with designating degree of humanity.
Free black constituents were 5/5. It had nothing to do with race and counting slaves as a full constituent was what the slavers wanted and was bad for slaves, good for slavery.
just curious - how did the early states verify the number of citizens? If Virginia said they had 3,000,000 citizens, or 6,000,000, How would the Federal Government know?
It was solely about apportionment representation. It had nothing to do with voting simply because in most states you either had to be a white male to vote and some states required paying taxes, being a landowner and or being literate to vote. Slaves were in none of these groups. Early one, blacks were expressly forbidden to vote.
Free blacks back then had to watch their backs to avoid being grabbed up and sold.
"Wait...let go of me... I'm not a slave, I'm free! I have my papers..."
(Sound of paper tearing, then the crackle of paper burning) "That's what they all say! What papers you talkin' 'bout?"
Not a proud era in our history, but long, long over.
3/5 counted slaves not African Americans. There were white slaves who also also counted 3/5.
The Southern Democrats wanted to count them for the purpose of determining the number of state representatives, but would not allow them to vote.
They wanted to stack the house to overwhelm future votes on slavery.