Posted on 05/04/2021 7:16:47 PM PDT by Olog-hai
The one that really makes me slap my forehead are the ones who proclaim it is proof of racism because it shows they thought blacks were only 3/5th’s as worthwhile as a white person.
“why not just end slavery right then”
Slaves were worth money - big money.
To purchase slaves often meant going into debt big time.
Slaves were thought to be essential back then - just like “undocumented” aliens are today.
John McCain was shocked to learn that American citizens would do stoop labor for $50/hour.
For the purposes of apportionment but not for voting.
They both wanted to release their slaves, but for different reasons, Virginia law prohibited it.
Jefferson would not buy or sell slaves, as he didn’t believe in buying or selling human beings. But he was in debt, and the laws of Virginia prohibited him from releasing slaves while he was in debt.
Washington’s slaves were actually his wife’s, and Virginia law prohibited releasing dowry slaves.
Robert E. Lee had the same situation. Both he and Washington were married to Custis women, and the slaves were Custis slaves who were part of the dowry for the marriage.
Even if that were true, that’s 3/5 of a person more than Dhimmicraps think she is.
Slaves were according to Wikipedia over 6% of the population of NY and NJ in the 1790 census:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_census
In SC, 43% of the residents were enslaved.
Isn't this (or wasn't this) taught in grade school at one time, about the reason for the three-fifths compromise, and why the South wanted to count slaves as one?
Why is this even debatable? Are these persons and this writer for the AP that dumb not to know this? I guess so.
Because southern states would likely have not agreed to a national framework wit them as lowest population and therefore representation in govt.
Jefferson originally included a cessation or slavery clause in the declaration of independence, but Franklin advised him to remove it or risk probable southern states walking out of the Congress.
Then their argument gets busted.
1. Slaveholders, businesses in the south and North that profited from slave labor, etc.
2.No one was held in slavery voluntarily, unless you mean the hundreds of 1000s of indentured men and women. But no slave from Africa was in bondage voluntarily. Ya think?
3. No.
Are you ignorant or just trying to bait the issue?
The left doesn’t want to debate; they want to forge a false narrative.
Moving the goalposts.
My gosh, AP has it exactly backward. These people are unredeemable.
“Jefferson would not buy or sell slaves”
Monticello says:
“Jefferson purchased fewer than twenty slaves in his lifetime.”
“Many slaveowners, including Jefferson, understood that female slaves—and their future children—represented the best means to increase the value of his holdings, what he called ‘capital.’”
‘”I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm,’ Jefferson remarked in 1820.”
“He purchased slaves occasionally, because of labor needs or to unite spouses. Despite his expressed ‘scruples’ against selling slaves except ‘for delinquency, or on their own request,’ he sold more than 110 in his lifetime, mainly for financial reasons.”
“There were over twenty known escapees from Monticello from 1769 to 1819.”
“Thomas Jefferson freed two people during his life. He freed five people in his will. He allowed two or three people to escape without pursuit, and recommended informal freedom for two others. In total, of the more than six hundred people Jefferson enslaved, he freed only ten people – all members of the same family.”
https://www.monticello.org/slavery/slavery-faqs/property/
True...forgotten truth.
The Three-fifths Clause is older than the Constitution and didn’t begin in a debate over slavery despite the endless modern belief that everything had to.
The 3/5ths clause was part of a tax amendment to the Articles of Confederation debated in 1783, years before there was even a discussion about replacing the Articles.
The Amendment proposed changing the apportionment of taxes from property to population.
But since slaves were a form of property that meant that slaveowning states would still be taxed on property in addition to population. Thomas Jefferson noted that Southern states would be taxed “according to their numbers and their wealth conjunctly, while the northern would be taxed on numbers only”. James Madison proposed the 3/5ths ratio.
When the Continental Congress later debated replacing the Articles the 3/5ths ratio was incorporated into the Constitution for purposes of Representation.
In 1787, the vast majority of states were slave states including most of the Northern states. There was a debate in the constitutional convention on the topic of slavery, which I have read. The representatives of the Northern states realized that without tolerating slavery, there would be no Union, and they would all be retaken by the British.
The Southern states weren't all that eager to break from England in the first place, and were it not for the work of the Swamp fox, they probably would have remained loyal to the Crown.
If the two sides had split in 1787 and somehow avoided being retaken by the British, it would have likely avoided the horrors and destruction of the Civil War.
They needed the slave holding states to provide a stronger front against English efforts to retake the colonies. Without the slave holding states, they would have been conquered by the British. With the slave holding states added to their defensive capability, the British were discouraged from attempting to grab any of the states back.
Also bear in mind that in 1787, the vast majority of states were slave states.
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