[noiseman]

I give her credit for standing for the truth, but I'm tired of seeing the "three-fifths" nonsense repeated yet again. Condi Rice is certainly smart enough to know that what that was about was the North trying to minimize the political power of the South in reapportionment by diluting the effect of the slaves they held. Counting slaves in equal numbers to anyone else in the census would have handed the South the legislative representation to keep slavery going. The reason for counting them as less than a full person, which was just a statistical strategy, not a value statement, was to deny the South that power and thus to more quickly end slavery.

It's just so utterly disingenuous when liberals mention this as if it were intended to deny blacks their dignity by valuing them less than whites. It had nothing to do with that, and in fact was attempting to accomplish exactly the opposite.

[Verginius Rufus]

That was one of the most troublesome issues at the Constitutional Convention--whether to count the slaves in calculating the representation states would have in the House of Representatives. The northern states which had few or no slaves didn't want the slaves included at all, and feared that the three-fifths compromise would just encourage the southern states to keep importing more slaves.

In fact the 3/5 ratio went back to a deal made by the Confederation Congress over how to assess each state's tax contribution. It was estimated that the labor of 5 slaves was equivalent to the labor of 3 free persons. The slaves had no incentive to work well or work quickly (other than fear of punishment) and could be very ingenious at getting as little done as possible. John Adams once observed a group of 12 slaves working very inefficiently to get something done--apparently not grasping that they were doing so deliberately.

[workerbee]

Thx, also sick of the stupidity about “3/5th”.

[TigersEye]

She is smart enough to know that but apparently she doesn’t.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Thank you for that crystal clear explanation. I was getting ready to respond similarly to her remark about 3/5, but nailed it. I hate the liberal effort to completely distort the 3/5 enumeration into something it wasn’t. It was a way to reduce the electoral power of the slave states to enable eventual abolition. So it was a strong PRO-BLACK compromise.

[Pagey]

That’s Clarity!