Eleanor Finch
The Three-Fifths Compromise, also known as the Three-Fifths Clause, is part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. This clause, which was superseded and repealed by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, stated that for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, African-American slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person. This compromise was reached during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, where delegates from the Northern and Southern states disagreed over the issue of slavery and its role in determining legislative representation.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Location in the U.S. Constitution | Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 |
| Date of Amendment | April 18, 1783 |
| Purpose | Representatives and direct taxes were apportioned among the states according to their population |
| Impact | Reduced the "population" of the South by about 1.5 million "persons" |
| Overturned By | Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) |
| Other Names | Three-Fifths Compromise |
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What You'll Learn
The Three-Fifths Compromise
Slaveholding states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives those states could elect and send to Congress. Free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, since those slaves had no voting rights. A compromise was struck to resolve this issue. The compromise counted three-fifths of each state's slave population toward that state's total population for the purpose of apportioning the House of Representatives. This gave the Southern states more power in the House relative to the Northern states.
The three-fifths ratio was first proposed by James Madison in 1788. He explained the reasoning for the ratio in Federalist No. 54, "The Apportionment of Members Among the States." Madison argued that slaves could not be considered merely as property, nor as full persons. The three-fifths ratio was an attempt to characterise slaves as somewhere in between.
In 1868, Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment superseded Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 and explicitly repealed the Three-Fifths Compromise.
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Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3
The Three-Fifths Compromise was a "matter of compromise and concession", according to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, who wrote about it in 1833. It was a necessary sacrifice to the spirit of conciliation that was crucial for the union of states with diverse interests, conditions, and political institutions.
The Suspension Clause is also referenced in Article V, which shielded the clause from constitutional amendment prior to 1808. In 1913, the 16th Amendment exempted all income taxes from this clause, allowing income tax to be applied to dividends and capital gains, and not just regular income.
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Thirteenth Amendment
The Three-Fifths Compromise, part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, stated that for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, African-American slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person. This was a compromise between Southern politicians who wanted enslaved African-Americans to be counted as 'persons' for congressional representation, and Northern politicians who rejected these demands out of concern for giving the South too much power. The North's compromise was based on the fact that representation in the new Congress would be based on population, in contrast to the one-vote-for-one-state principle in the earlier Continental Congress.
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.
The Thirteenth Amendment was the first of two ratified amendments to be signed by a President. On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. The Thirteenth Amendment was President Lincoln's top legislative priority after winning reelection in 1864.
The Thirteenth Amendment has rarely been cited in case law, but it has been used to strike down peonage and some race-based discrimination. It has also been invoked to empower Congress to make laws against modern forms of slavery, such as sex trafficking.
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Fourteenth Amendment
In the United States Constitution, the Three-fifths Compromise is part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3. The Three-Fifths Clause stated that African-American slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person when considering representation in the House of Representatives. This was based on the number of inhabitants of every age, sex, and quality, excluding untaxed Native Americans. The Three-Fifths Compromise was superseded and repealed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.
The Fourteenth Amendment, passed by Congress on June 13, 1866, and ratified on July 9, 1868, extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people. The amendment was proposed in response to the Civil War, aiming to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens. A significant provision of the amendment was the grant of citizenship to "All persons born or naturalized in the United States," thereby including those who were previously enslaved.
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment formally defines United States citizenship and safeguards various civil rights, ensuring they cannot be denied or abridged by any state law or action. This section, primarily written by Representative John Bingham, is the most frequently litigated part of the amendment. It overruled the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, which stated that African Americans could not become citizens.
The Fourteenth Amendment also includes the Due Process Clause, which applies the Fifth Amendment's similar clause to state governments. This provision protects all individuals against the arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property, guaranteeing both procedural and substantive due process. Procedural due process pertains to the procedures for restraining life, liberty, or property, such as the right to a hearing by a neutral decision-maker. On the other hand, substantive due process involves the government's justification for engaging in these processes.
The Equal Protection Clause was included in the Fourteenth Amendment to constitutionalize the anti-discrimination principles of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and prevent the enforcement of the southern states' Black Codes. The Citizenship Clause, another important aspect of the amendment, affirmed birthright citizenship for all children born within the United States, regardless of their parents' citizenship status.
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Apportionment in the House of Representatives
The Three-Fifths Compromise, also known as the Three-Fifths Clause, was part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. This clause stated that for the purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, African-American slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person. This was based on the compromise that slaves were considered "inhabitants, but as debased by servitude below the equal level of free inhabitants". The Three-Fifths Compromise was proposed by delegate James Wilson and seconded by Charles Pinckney during the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
The Compromise was an attempt to balance the interests of the Northern and Southern states. The Southern states wanted to include slaves as part of their population to increase their representation in the House of Representatives, while the Northern states did not want slaves to be counted at all. The Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise that allowed slaves to be counted as three-fifths of a person for representation purposes. This reduced the representation of the Southern states by two-fifths, as a slave was considered to have only three-fifths of the political power of a free person.
The actual impact of the Three-Fifths Clause on Southern representation in the House of Representatives was not as significant as some may think. Counting slaves as full persons would not have shifted the balance of power in the House to the South at any point between the ratification of the Constitution and the onset of the Civil War. For example, in 1820, 47% of the U.S. population lived in Southern states. If slaves had been fully counted, Southern delegates in the 1820s would have been outnumbered in the House of Representatives by a smaller margin, but the North would have still held a majority.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was superseded and explicitly repealed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. With the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment, enslaved persons and their descendants were fully counted in the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives is designed to represent the people, with each state having at least one representative and the size of the delegation depending on the state's total population. The number of seats in the House of Representatives is distributed among the 50 states based on the decennial census population counts, with each member representing approximately 30,000 citizens in the First Federal Congress.
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Frequently asked questions
The Three-Fifths Compromise is part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the US Constitution.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was an agreement between delegates from the Northern and Southern states. It stated that for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, African-American slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person.
The Compromise was necessary to resolve disagreements over slavery at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The delegates from the small and large states were divided on the issue of the apportionment of legislative representation.
No, the Three-Fifths Compromise reduced the political power of slaveholding states. While it granted slaveholding states the right to count three-fifths of their enslaved population when apportioning representatives to Congress, this also increased their federal tax burden.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was superseded and repealed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.
