Posted on 09/18/2025 11:12:48 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
I link to the video in the third paragraph but here it is again.
Charlie Kirk Debates Bernie Sanders’ Press Secretary on Systemic Racism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTswW9dg07A
I think that I'm doing what many other people have been doing over the past week and will continue to do so. Kirk's debates are amazing to watch. Its no wonder they wanted him gone.
Ping to just my ping list, maybe you might have similar thoughts.
So it is said (I’m still having more new thoughts) It would be good to watch more than just the tiny clips referenced and also more than just the 5 minutes generally highlighted.
But its an embedded topic and it needed to be highlighted separately.
Slavey became so common for European colonial empires. I should add that slavery had been all but eliminated in Europe thanks to the power of Christianity. However larger more centralized monarchies reintroduced slavery in their colonies or permitted their overseas vassals to practice it because it was beneficial.
Slavery always happens because wealthy connected legal bodies recognize they can make even more money by controlling the human side of labor as property.
Its one of the legitimate reasons for having legal restrictions by government against slavery and its practices.
You keep reiterating that “the 3/5ths compromise was anti-slavery.” No, it wasn’t. It also wasn’t pro-slavery (although it’s been heavily criticized by people horrified by slavery). What was it actually? It was, duh, a compromise.
The issue was how to compute House of Representatives memberships for states where many of the residents were slaves. The slave states wanted the slaves counted in full. Agreeing to that solution would have been pro-slavery.
The free states pointed out that, under the slave states’ own laws, slaves were property. They asked “Should our horses and cows be counted?” They wanted the slaves excluded. That solution would have been anti-slavery.
What emerged was the well-known 3/5 rule. It was a compromise. Neither side got everything it wanted. It’s misleading to focus on the rejection of the complete pro-slavery position without also acknowledging the rejection of the complete anti-slavery position.
The point was that unless the abolitionists had fought it, the hypocritical slave owners would have been successful in getting slaves counted as full persons for the purposes of political apportionment, giving slave states greater power. The abolitionists fought to not have slaves counted as persons if they weren’t going to be allowed to vote anyway. Not because they thought they were not persons, but because all the power from their numbers went to the slavers oppressing them.
The Virginia House voted to abolish slavery a generation prior to the Revolutionary War but the British Crown vetoed the act.
The effect of the compromise was ant-slavery because a whole free black person or indentured servant could be added to the census as Northern states did for representation. Southern states could add only six tenths of a person for a slave.
Trying to understand how mere head counts, or split head counts, makes a statement of ethical nature toward the practice of slavery.
It was disingenuous to consider them property for all but a head count, but treating them as whole persons even to that extent strikes me as tacitly anti-slavery.
There is good reason I am not an attorney.
The free states pointed out that, under the slave states’ own laws, slaves were property. They asked “Should our horses and cows be counted?” They wanted the slaves excluded. That solution would have been anti-slavery.Actually, it was under the Articles of Confederation that slaves were considered property for tax purposes. The system was so unsatisfactory due to undervaluations that in 1783 a proposal was made to base the tax apportionment on population not property. (The 3/5 Compromise entry on Wikipedia gets this wrong...) At that time, the northern states wanted to count slaves, as it would increase the population counts thus raising the tax contributions of slave states. The 3/5ths count per slave was the compromise solution, but the law failed due to two states, NY and NH, voting against it.
“. It is common practice for those who dishonestly wield slavery as a weapon to take a step back and cite some odd-ball random fact like France abolished slavery in the 1300s or whatever year it was. France abolished white people owning white people; France abolished Frenchies owning Frenchies. “
And omits entirely how “blacks” got to Haiti - brought in by the French as slaves for their plantations on Haiti.
You are mincing words. The 3/5s compromise was an anti-slavery “compromise”. Without the attitude against slavery there would have no need for any “compromise”, the counting of slaves would have been accepted by all the colonies. It - the compromise was produced to provide some satisfaction to the anti-slavery position of enough colonial reps.
bump
“It - the compromise was produced to provide some satisfaction to the anti-slavery position of enough colonial reps.”
Indeed it was produced to provide some satisfaction to the anti-slavery position.
It was also produced to provide some satisfaction to the pro-slavery position. Slave states that treated blacks as property for most purposes were, for purposes of political power, allowed to act as if they were (at least sort of) people.
It was a typical compromise. Each side got something and each side gave up something.
It was neither pro-slavery nor anti-slavery. Fundamentally, it was practical. Without the compromise, there could not have been a Constitution. The former colonies would have continued to lurch along under the Articles of Confederation — which, by 1787, were widely seen, North and South, to be dysfunctional.
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“It was neither pro-slavery nor anti-slavery.”
Wrong. The fact, the cause, the reason it was done at all was by the demand of the anti-slavery camp. That makes the matter a anti-slavery act, and it proved itself over time as the south kept losing representation and due to that losing votes in the following decades on Congressional anti-slavery acts. Without the 3/5 “compromise” the slave states would not have lost so much power in Congress. The 3/5 position proved its worth over time in favor of the anti-slavery position.
bookmark
“The fact, the cause, the reason it was done at all was by the demand of the anti-slavery camp.”
No, the anti-slavery camp demand was for the slaves to not be counted at all. They wanted representation in the House to be based on the number of FREE people. The pro-slavery camp demand was for the slaves to be counted as full people.
The pro-slavery camp didn’t get everything it wanted. But that doesn’t make the compromise anti-slavery, because the anti-slavery camp also didn’t get everything it wanted.
Here’s a summary from Encyclopedia Britannica:
“The matter of how to determine population was anything but trivial. Having failed to secure the abolishment of slavery, some delegates from the Northern states sought to make representation dependent on the size of a state’s free population. Southern delegates, on the other hand, threatened to abandon the convention if enslaved individuals were not counted. Eventually, the framers agreed on a compromise that called for representation in the House of Representatives to be apportioned on the basis of a state’s free population plus three-fifths of its enslaved population.”
Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/three-fifths-compromise?utm_source=chatgpt.com
You keep ignoring the fact that minus the push from the anti-slavery side the compromise would not even have come up. Minus the push from the anti-slavery position slaves would have been counted same as all other people, because there would have been no anti-slavery push against doing so.
But there was the anti-slavery push, and BECAUSE OF IT, the 3/5 compromise was made. That fact makes the comprise very existence due to the push from the anti-slavery position, and a compromised victory for that position.
You and I have completely different understandings of what “compromise” means. Specifically, you keep wanting to look at only part of what was going on.
Yes, if the anti-slavery people had kept quiet and let the slavocracy have its way, each slave would have been counted as 1.
But it’s equally true that, if the pro-slavery people had kept quiet and let the anti-slavery faction have its way, each slave would have counted as zero. (Representation would have been based on the number of free people.)
The “very existence” of the compromise was due to the competing pressures — the pushes from BOTH sides, not just one.
I don’t misunderstand the meaning of compromise.
You misinterpret the facts to try to water down the fact that (1) the pro-slavery people were not going to keep quiet and let slaves count for zero - there was never any chance of that, they had no such willing position at any time (2) and therefor why did a compromise have to be arranged to begin with - because of the pro-slavery position, or because of the anti-slavery position; it was only due the fact there was an anti-slavery position.
Did the compromise give the anti-slavery position all they wanted? No. It was still a victory, albeit a truncated victory for the anti-slavery position.
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