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To: Jim Noble
1) Please cite any reference that the Constitution or its authors considered blacks to be "less than human". One will do.

Your kidding, right? Three fifths a white man.

2) States unquestionably had the power to deny women the vote until XIX. If XIX were repealed tomorrow, they would have the power again.

Sure, by that interpretation of the 9th. However, under such a scenario, we are not a "free" country. We are ruled on the whim of man with a few "guidelines" that are easily ignored.

29 posted on 07/23/2002 8:04:04 AM PDT by FreeTally
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To: FreeTally
>>Your kidding, right? Three fifths a white man<<

For the purposes of apportioning the House of Representatives. This has nothing to do with the humanity, or lack thereof, of the blacks.

In fact, it was a way to punish slave states by reducing their representation in the House. The slave owners wanted to count the slaves at 100% to increase their House delegations.

But you're kidding, right? You already knew that.

35 posted on 07/23/2002 8:13:45 AM PDT by Jim Noble
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To: FreeTally
Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

The obvious (and wrong!) conclusion is that 3/5 of all other persons meant slaves, and therefore the founding fathers thought blacks were only 3/5 human.

The careful reader, though, looks at the paragraph as a whole: what are the founding fathers trying to accomplish here? They were careful not to say that "negros" counted 3/5s of a person, but rather, all "non-free" people were 3/5th of a person. Why? This is used to determine representation in Congress--the 3/5s clause, although widely mis-interpreted as being some "anti-black" sentiment by the founding fathers, was a way for the Northern states to punish the Southern states by reducing their numbers in the legislature, so long as they continued to have slavery in the South. By the Southern states freeing their slaves, their population would increase, as determined by the census, and they would be on equal footing with the Northern states in terms of representation.

Not only did the founding fathers view blacks as fully human, they incorporated a punishment to slave holding states within the Constitution.

45 posted on 07/23/2002 8:23:41 AM PDT by Viva Le Dissention
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To: FreeTally
Your kidding, right? Three fifths a white man.

Those words don't appear in the document. The 3/5s rule was for apportioning congressional representation to include only 3/5s of those inhabitants of a state who were non-citizens or ineligible to vote.

107 posted on 07/23/2002 10:45:29 AM PDT by Twodees
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