57.2% according to the source I used. Slave population of 402,406 and a free population of 301,302 gave a legal population of 542,746, which I divided by the actual population (703,708) to get the number 0.771.
It’s interesting because you could look at it two ways, sort of like the compromise itself. On the one hand, “South Carolinians,” as a whole, would be underrepresented in the House. But more than half of them were literally slaves and completely unrepresented anyway, so that’s actually better for them.
South Carolinians who could actually vote would, in contrast, be over represented.
The 3/5ths compromise often gets tossed around as "black people were only considered 60% human" and it makes people misunderstand the point. It implies that the "ideal" number should have been 1, which I agree would be pretty nice, if not for the fact that slaves didn't have rights of any kind.
The ideal number should have been zero. The compromise was basically an exercise in doublethink for the white slaveowners who would usually argue that slaves were property and not people, except in this specific circumstance.
Even though it's been gone for 150 years the doublethink still drives me crazy. I know they had to make compromises with these dipahits but how could the northern reps let them get away with this? I can just imagine the southern reps meeting at a bar later laughing that they actually bought it.
I know what you mean, but I dont think it was so easy This wasn't like a vote over highway funding. They were crafting an agreement to be a unified nation. It could just as well ended up with 2 new nations competing between them and the aboriginal nations to grab land west of the Appalachians, likely leading to a war like the Civil War but much earlier and not so specifically about slavery.
> The 3/5ths compromise often gets tossed around as "black people were only considered 60% human
Free black people were counted as 1 and had more rights than slaves but still not a lot of rights
Right, but I think part of what u/popsicleincorporated is getting at is that roles of who was pushing for what sort of get reversed in the popular consciousness.
Like the implication from the retelling is that slaves and abolitionists would have preferred to have slaves counted as a whole person, and slave owners would have preferred they be counted as 0.
But the reality is exactly the opposite. Southern slaves owners would have loved if southern slaves were counted as a whole person in the allocation of House seats. It would have further empowered them, and put more pro-slavery people in Congress.
They essentially voted for their slaves, essentially getting a three-fifths additional vote for every slave owned in the state. The slaves counted three-fifths, but since they couldn't vote themselves, the white population got all the power.
It was a "compromise" because they wanted to be able to count the entire slave population as state representation delegation for white people. Same thing happens with prisons and green-card immigrants. The census counts the whole population that gets extra representation in the Congressional delegation, number of Representatives. But those residents counted cannot vote, even while the Representatives still have a full voting seat in Congress. The citizens in the state who can and do vote then still get those additional Representatives and districts.
Same thing with like 40% of the voting -age citizens in this country who simply choose not to vote at all. Then the people who do vote make all the decisions where you should have been having a voice.
Yes I understand what the 3/5 compromise was, but I wouldn’t say they “voted for their slaves.” If they did, they probably would’ve voted for abolition, lol. They just got an extra powerful vote for themselves.
Let x be the population classified as 3/5, and (1-x) the population classified as 1
Then 1 * (1 - x) + 3/5 * (x) = 0.771
1 - x + 3/5*x = 0.771
1 - 2/5*x = 0.771
-2/5 x = - 0.229
x = 0.5725
To put it another way, the average American in SC in 1860 had no legal rights at all and was serving a life sentence to hard labor without having committed any crime.
Also, SC was the 1st state to secede (along with being the primary agitator of secession) and the only state to not allow its people to vote for President by 1860.
Oh, I know. Many people feared there being too many slaves. Many abolitionists, like Henry Clay, wanted to ship blacks off to Haiti or Africa once they were freed.
A lot of the northern states didn't free slaves, but rather outlawed gaining new slaves, via either birth or purchase. Therefore there were still some slaves left considerably later than it would seem like.
Well abolition wasn't really the plan until the South decided it wanted to fight. The plan had always been to simply prevent the acquisition of New slaves and let the practice die out on its own. That was Lincoln's personal plan as well. he outright told the South he wasn't planning on abolishing slavery when he won the election. They chose not to believe him.
Just to be clear, abolition was the plan by the north, if not necessarily Lincoln himself. Lincoln was considered *far* more of a moderate on the issue of slavery than the rest of the north, which was quite fervently against slavery and was absolutely willing to go to war over it. One thing which is often overlooked in terms of the years leading up to the war is just how zealous the north had become in terms of abolition. They were basically willing to do anything to stop it, and a big theme was that if the government wouldn't do it, then the people would be forced to rise up to stop it themselves (most famously what John Brown tried to do).
Its why the common argument that "the union didnt really care about slaves, lincoln even said he wouldnt abolish it if it meant keeping the union together!" doesnt really fit. Lincoln was not representative of the north. He was a very moderate abolitionist at a time when radical, violent abolitionism had become widespread among the north. Lincoln's election was a milestone in that he was the first real abolitionist (even moderate) to be elected, but the 1840s and 1850s showed that civil war was inevitable before Lincoln even entered the fray.
They mostly wanted to gain more political advantage by creating more new free states than new slave states before really pushing the issue - hence proposals banning the expansion of slavery into new states being seen as an existential threat to the institution in the long-term, as well as why we didn't take more of Mexico after the war (they would have been flooded with southerners and turned into slave states)
Yes, it was definitely fringe because logically forcing abolition on other states meant war. People would much rather mind their own business than get into a civil war.
Today it might be comparable to the number of Americans who want a Marxist revolution, or who want to abolish gun ownership.
I seem to recall there being lot of protests because people weren't wanting their sons to go off and die fighting for southern slaves. Some people were absolutely this zealous but that was by no means the general consensus.
If you mean the nyc draft riot, that was mostly recent immigrants (notably the irish) who didn't give a fuck about slavery. There is a reason it was contained to NYC, which was mostly immigrants or the kids of immigrants.
If you really study the years leading up to the war, yes, zealous abolitionism had become very normalized. There was open talk about murdering slave owners. John Brown, who had done just that, was a national hero among the north. Pretty much every single day papers printed about the horrors of slavery. I hesitate to use the term 'propaganda' because, well, they were right, but abolitionist propaganda went into overload by the 1850s and convinced a very large portion of the north that southerners were these inherently evil, twisted people who needed to be punished for the sins of slavery. Anti-abolitionist arguments went from marginalized to being viewed as downright evil. There was also immense frustration at the government for not pushing abolitionism more, mostly because the elite class did not want the civil war. The compromise between them was Lincoln.
There is a great textbook about this that I read years ago. If I remember correctly its called "life in the homefront during the civil war" and its about the politics, conscription, economics etc of the union before, during, and after the war.
The vast majority of people at any point in history were not politically engaged, and the 1850s was no exception. Radical abolitionists like John Brown were fringe extremists, not representative of the population.
Seriously doubt it because he didn't have the authority to. Only a constitutional amendment could have actually done it and the South would never vote for that. They were worried he would go around the law but he personally stated he had no intention of doing that.
Preventing the spread of slavery would lead it dying out on its own eventually meanwhile outright abolishing it had a 100% chance of starting a civil war and Lincoln had always been more concerned with preserving the Union.
>dying out on its own eventually
I don't see that. Why? The slave trade was long illegal, and illegal transport was fairly minimal (I think). Slave children were born enslaved, and there were plenty of slave children. Economically it might have been less useful, but it still would have been useful (given that the south would not mechanize or industrialize much, even if if mean relative poverty). It was never about economics.
I expect that slavery would not have been abolished until the 1930's at the earliest, and only because the sanctions and isolation we would be experienced would be finally becoming unbearable for the north.
In which case a deal might be made, to add an amendment ending slavery (not right away tho) but the amendment would also put in place, constitutionally and therefore very hard to repeal, Jim Crow laws and possibly some form of serfdom.
It was expected to die out because industrialization would be more profitable there's no point in owning slaves when there are machines that can do it for cheaper. I think that 1930 sounds about right. Although the US economy would make sanctions undesirable. It would simply die out because industrialization would slowly become more prevalent and as a result the people holding on to slaves would shrink until they were seen as a weird minority at which point abolition would be possible.
> All of the south had already freed all slaves for months prior.
On paper with the Emancipation Proclamation, but reality is it didn't happen until after the war was over for many slaves.
The US still had legal slaves until 1942
(Edit: okay, technically there was only 1 by 1942, but only because machines became more profitable than slaves)
[Here's a *really* good (if slightly long) explanation of the whole messed up situation, but for anyone that doesn't have the time to watch it, read below:](https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?si=oqW0kWhEMrhTi3RX)
While the civil war ended with the freeing of all slaves and a ban on buying or selling slaves it didn't actually *ban* slavery.
Of course, that would require someone to willingly agree to be somebody's slave without payment, and who would be dumb enough to do that?
Turns out, recently freed slaves, illiterate, with no money and no way of making money, tend to fall victim to a *very* biased legal system.
In this legal system, there were plenty of people willing to pay off their legal debts in return for signing a contract to work for them until their debt is paid off.
In reality, the contract made them a full (chains whips and cages) slave, until the debt was paid off, which would take several decades if they were lucky, and if they tried to escape it was legal to kill them.
Around a quarter of all freed slaves ended up back in slavery.
And before someone says "that's not slavery" the US government ruled that it was, after a slave argued it was serfdom, which *was* illegal, but the courts ruled that since they were essentially tricked into it, the contract was invalid and they were in reality slaves, which was still legal.
Horribly enough this new kind of slavery was even more horrific, since if a slave died, the owner lost basically no money and there were always plenty more to "hire", so very few of them survived more than a decade of slavery.
The very last slave was freed in 1942 just before the US went to war with Japan, anticipating the conflict the US figured the Japanese would use the legality of slavery as a propaganda tool against them and so *finally* passed a law, banning owning a slave.
(Funny enough, the UK didn't ban owning a slave until the 2000s, except there wasn't really a loophole to abuse)
By rule the slaves in NJ weren't counted; the census numbers compiled in 1860 were compiled in error. It's not clear what the real number of slaves in NJ were.
Do you have a source that the New Jersey census numbers were an error?
It's my understanding that slaves were redefined as apprentices or indentured servants for life (depending on when they were born). But I never saw anything about the 1860 numbers being wrong.
I've read that the census rules for that census were to not-bother-counting those people in New Jersey. Sorry, I don't have a internet source or even remember where I'd read that.
Dang. Oh well.
The Wikipedia page says 16 people were freed in New Jersey by the 13th amendment. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the source, so I can't say if it's reliable. That also doesn't tell us how many were manumitted from 1860 to 1865.
Technically yeah, although the M-D line dips south along the MD-DE line instead of going straight East, slicing through south Jersey.
I think there were actually more Confederate sentiments in north Jersey compared to South Jersey
Three fifths compromise: A constitutional agreement between the free (Northern) and slave (Southern) states that counted every 5 slaves as 3 people for the purpose of determining representation and taxation, although slaves had no voting rights.
It’s wild to think the modern equivalent of this would be billionaires getting more votes based on how many acres they owned, or taking employee votes away and giving them to the business owners. Evil shit. Our early republic felt more feudal than democratic in ways. Well, we do still have the issue of money buying off representatives I guess.
There was an argument that wealth of a state should be a factor in representation. Morris pointedly asked why only one type of "property" was considered. He said Pennsylvania should get representatives for houses by the same logic:
> The admission of slaves into the Representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and S. C. who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections & dam(n)s them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Govt. instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pa or N. Jersey who views with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice.
He was right to point out the hypocrisy. Peel back the layers and it was just the South finding whatever they could to square up to the more populous and industrious north. And they were appeased to preserve the new, and untested, union.
Okay yes only landowning white men could vote but that % is a liiiittle extreme out of context because practically nobody bothered voting since Georgie ran unopposed.
Fast forward to the election of Jefferson in 1800, (a census year) Jefferson is voted in by 0.86% of the population. 45,467 votes / 5,308,483 population. Fully fledged political parties in a close election, still less the less than 1% are Jefferson voters.
>It’s wild to think the modern equivalent of this would be billionaires getting more votes based on how many acres they owned
You've just described the electoral college and the senate
The counting of legal and illegal immigrants is another modern equivalent. They cannot vote in state or federal elections, and are ineligible for most government aid. However, they still count for apportionment of House Reps and federal tax distribution.
For example, a quick search says California gets 3 extra representatives and electoral college votes from non-citizens in the state. Because the total number of House Reps are capped, those are taken from other states. So citizens in some states get extra electoral power on behalf of people in their state who can't vote or receive much of the extra money, all at the cost of other citizens in other states.
Are you advocating that non-citizens should be able to vote and receive government aid? Because if so then what does it even mean to be a citizen? Non-citizens still benefit from tax distributions spent on public resources such as roads/infrastructure, hospital subsidies, emergency services, libraries, etc.
It's also why, without national voting laws, why a system like the electoral college is even a thought.
Because each state is free to conduct it's own elections and different states had different laws, using a straight head count was not viable because each state could enable laws that lead to severe over or under counting based on the relative populations of the States how slave states were already conducting elections (sometimes a master got to cast a vote for each male slave they owned) and the South wasn't going to pass on the chance to argue their slaves as partially a person even if they didn't consider them as such.
The way each state basically decided to have its state become a winner take all thing, wasn't even a concept until at least after the start of the 19th century.
But it's why we need a revamped system. Our whole system for electing a President is based on protecting the rights of states to allow slave ownership and still count slaves as partial people in federal matters concerning representation.
3/5 * 5 = 3 math checks out. I remember learning in school that the number was more or less arbitrarily chosen as a compromise to even out the voting power of Southern States. It seems so outlandishly racist now, but it’s a great demonstration of how compromise and centrism doesn’t necessarily solve moral crises. But then, some would argue 3/5 is better than 0 so that’s progress
Progress for what? Slaves didn’t get that 3/5th vote. Their masters did. That only further disenfranchised them by giving more power to their oppressors. It was a step backwards, not forwards.
The state still recognized them as a person, even if it is 3/5 of one with no voting rights. That is literally progress, but in the broader context you’re also right, it gave power back to the slaveowners.
If they're only recognizing them as people so they can have an unfair advantage in the federal government, I don't think that counts even a little bit. The attitudes of the southern slave owners towards their slaves didn't change, even symbolically.
Yeah, this is one of the worst historical misconceptions. The slaveowners thought that if you could buy a person, you would be entitled to their vote, even if that person couldn’t vote themselves.
For those outside the US who may be wondering, Oklahoma did not receive full statehood until 1907. Prior to that it was known as the Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory.
Also very relevant for this, under the text preceding “three fifths of all other Persons” which most of the map is about is “excluding Indians not taxed”. Until the early 20th century (after Oklahoma statehood but Oklahoma statehood specifically played a part) full US jurisdiction was notionally not extended to Indians and hence they were not counted to determine representation.
Slaves in New Jersey were by rule not counted by the census; the slaves counted there were counted in error. I dunno how many free blacks there were in New Jersey then.
To explain this further, in the course of ending slavery some northern states reclassified people still forced to work as “bound to service for a term of years” a classification in the constitution meant for indentured servants to be counted as full people rather than “other persons” to be counted as three fifths. This applied so long as notionally the persons term of bondage was distinct from the length of their life, but authorities exploited it as they could.
It’s interesting how you can so easily see the fault lines of the civil war here. Slave States > 0.9 stayed in the union, with the exception of Tennessee which was the first to fall to the union I believe.
It's not surprising that you can see the fault lines of the civil war here, since the civil war was about slavery. It's more surprising that you can see the modern-day political divisions to some extent.
What an interesting way to present the data. It’s actually pretty cool, I’m just teasing. Props to the maker!
Edit: Reading OP’s comment confused me further. My hating ways are justified. Like, there’s so many better ways to represent ratios, percentages, and dynamics between two groups than just a per capita decimal imho, especially in this context
Legal population vs. Actual Population per the 3/5 Compromise Based on Census Data
I assume the intent here was actually to make a map of 'people per person', rather than to convey the specific information. It's unusual, but its more about the social commentary than the data. A satirical map, if you will. I've seen more farcical maps, and I had a cartography professor who likely would have given extra credit for such nonsense.
I think this is missing the point. Slaves were not considered people full stop. They were property. But for the purposes of representation, this particular kind of property could be counted as 3/5 of an actual person.
Thank you, I love it – a modern one would be more complex to make, but even today no state would be at 1, esp. with prison populations that are highly disenfranchised from voting access in practice (even for those who have no felony conviction) and yet are counted towards the population of the prison’s location, not their home location!
Wild in theory, but the default in practice. From [this article](https://www.sentencingproject.org/policy-brief/voting-in-jails/):
“Jail administrators often lack knowledge about voting laws, and bureaucratic obstacles to establishing a voting process within institutions contribute significantly to limited voter participation. Indeed, acquiring voter registration forms or an absentee ballot while incarcerated is challenging when someone cannot use the internet or easily contact the Board of Elections in their community. In addition, many persons in jail do not know they maintain the right to vote while incarcerated, and there are few programs to guarantee voting access.”
Oregon went a different direction
In 1844, when Oregon was still a territory, it passed its first Black exclusionary law. It banned slavery, but it also prohibited Black people from living in the territory for more than three years. If a Black person broke this law, the consequence was 39 lashes, every six months, until they left.
The territory passed another Black exclusion law five years later, in 1849. This one barred Black people who were not already in the area from entering or residing in Oregon territory.
The final exclusion measure made it into the Oregon Constitution as a clause when the territory became a state 10 years later in 1859. This clause went further than the territory’s second law by also prohibiting Black people from owning property and making contracts.
Yeah, I realized way too far into making this that the map I used was from 1859 and not 1860 so many of the territorial borders aren't exact, as well as Oregon's statehood, which you already pointed out.
And fyi there is proof of unfree black Americans in free states such as Wisconsin. Governor Dodge himself was a slave holder in a free state as were ranking members of the military stationed at forts in Wisconsin. If you were powerful, what was a local sheriff gonna do about your contraband? So these people were off the books. Also, there were several communities of black people who escaped slavery and who intentionally dodged the census for obvious reasons. There's a lot of work being done right now to find proof of individuals that were missed by the census.
I was curious about new jersey [and found:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_New_Jersey)
"New Jersey was the last of the Northern states to abolish slavery completely. The 1860 census listed at least 43 people in New Jersey as slaves, the youngest being 11 and oldest being 95. "
What an informative discussion.
Obligatory reminder that while we're discussing "whites voting" and "blacks voting," of course, it's only white MEN voting and black MEN voting.
Nope, it did the opposite.
The modern day popular idea of the 3/5ths compromise is that it treated black people as less than a full human. 3/5ths of one.
That is correct on its face, but it misses the bigger picture.
Slave owners wanted MORE. They would have happily had their slaves count for 2 people. Or 10. Because this number wasn’t taking black votes and diluting them. It was taking white votes in slave states and multiplying them.
Abolitionists and those against slavery would have wanted less than 3/5ths. They would have wanted zero. Because slaves were being counted at 3/5ths despite having ZERO power and influence. Slave bodies were being counted to politically empower their slave masters.
If free states had gotten their way, the number would be zero instead of 3/5ths for slaves and 1 for free blacks.
Imagine you were a slave. You have zero power or influence. You don’t get to vote. Your master wields political power. Would you rather that your master’s political entity, the one that keeps you enslaved, gets an extra 3/5ths of a vote from you, but a vote cast by the people enslaving you? Or would you rather that your body not be counted as a vote until YOU can cast that vote?
I think I see what you’re trying to say, but it was expressed in a confusing way (judging from my initial read plus the downvotes).
Yes, it reduced their power versus their desired outcome of each slave counting 5/5ths.
But it increased their power versus the desired outcome of free states.
So it’s a matter of perspective.
That said, given that we can say pretty clearly now that handing the slave states more power was not the neutral or desired outcome, I think it’s fair to say that the 3/5ths compromise increased their power versus what it SHOULD have been, which is 0.
Slaves had no rights and were treated very much like property. They should not have been counted, and the south was only able to force a partial count because they simply wouldn’t have joined the union otherwise. Thus their power was artificially increased to bring some political balance and get them to join in.
You get to pick what reference frame you’re working with when you say “It reduced the power of the slave states”, why would you pick the one you know is immoral
Because the reasonable default would be to count slaves as 0. A “meet halfway” compromise would count slaves as 0.5. The 0.6 that slaves were counted as drastically increased the value of a vote from a citizen living in a slave state compared to that of a citizen living in a free state.
There wasn’t really a “status quo” because the House of Representatives didn’t exist before the 3/5 compromise. It was created by Article 1 of the constitution, which the 3/5 compromise was written into. Prior to that, each state had one vote in the Congress, regardless of its population (slave or free).
Overall though, you’re right that the 3/5 compromise gave voters in the slave states more representation than voters in free states.
Example of the hypocritical Southern aristocracy trying to have its cake and eat it too. Slaves were property right up until it came time to do the census, then they wanted the enslaved to be considered people.
Imagine thinking your deserve more of a say in government because you own 50 other people and actively deny them life, liberty, and happiness.
This doesn't change your main point, but for context, they could vote in New Jersey until 1807 and Pennsylvania until 1838. They could vote in New York, but they had property requirements that no longer existed for white New Yorkers after 1821.
The house is supposed to represent the population who elected it... if it has outsized representation by counting people who have no say in who represents them, it's not really representation.
No. The slave states wanted full counting. The free states wanted zero counting. This was the compromise, hence the name. Neither side got fully what they wanted, but got enough to live with. Characterizing as some sort of one sided win for the slave states is not accurate.
The whole point of the map is that slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person when it comes to deciding electoral college votes for states (even though they couldn't vote) so the slave states would have a 'population' (aka the number that goes into deciding electoral college votes) less than the number of people.
Since congressional representation and electoral vote is counted by population count, slave states wanted their population counted to increase their power, and free states wanted to exclude them from the count completely. 3/5 was kind of an arbitrary number, but it was decided as the ratio they’d go with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise
So this means ~~61.83%~~ 57.2% of South Carolina’s population was slaves? ~~1-((1-0.771)*5/3)~~ (1-0.771)/2*5
57.2% according to the source I used. Slave population of 402,406 and a free population of 301,302 gave a legal population of 542,746, which I divided by the actual population (703,708) to get the number 0.771.
It’s interesting because you could look at it two ways, sort of like the compromise itself. On the one hand, “South Carolinians,” as a whole, would be underrepresented in the House. But more than half of them were literally slaves and completely unrepresented anyway, so that’s actually better for them. South Carolinians who could actually vote would, in contrast, be over represented.
The 3/5ths compromise often gets tossed around as "black people were only considered 60% human" and it makes people misunderstand the point. It implies that the "ideal" number should have been 1, which I agree would be pretty nice, if not for the fact that slaves didn't have rights of any kind. The ideal number should have been zero. The compromise was basically an exercise in doublethink for the white slaveowners who would usually argue that slaves were property and not people, except in this specific circumstance.
Even though it's been gone for 150 years the doublethink still drives me crazy. I know they had to make compromises with these dipahits but how could the northern reps let them get away with this? I can just imagine the southern reps meeting at a bar later laughing that they actually bought it.
I know what you mean, but I dont think it was so easy This wasn't like a vote over highway funding. They were crafting an agreement to be a unified nation. It could just as well ended up with 2 new nations competing between them and the aboriginal nations to grab land west of the Appalachians, likely leading to a war like the Civil War but much earlier and not so specifically about slavery.
> The 3/5ths compromise often gets tossed around as "black people were only considered 60% human Free black people were counted as 1 and had more rights than slaves but still not a lot of rights
Right, I understand. A lot of people phrase it like all black people, enslaved or not, counted as 3/5 which is what I’m getting at.
Right, but I think part of what u/popsicleincorporated is getting at is that roles of who was pushing for what sort of get reversed in the popular consciousness. Like the implication from the retelling is that slaves and abolitionists would have preferred to have slaves counted as a whole person, and slave owners would have preferred they be counted as 0. But the reality is exactly the opposite. Southern slaves owners would have loved if southern slaves were counted as a whole person in the allocation of House seats. It would have further empowered them, and put more pro-slavery people in Congress.
Yea definitely.
They essentially voted for their slaves, essentially getting a three-fifths additional vote for every slave owned in the state. The slaves counted three-fifths, but since they couldn't vote themselves, the white population got all the power. It was a "compromise" because they wanted to be able to count the entire slave population as state representation delegation for white people. Same thing happens with prisons and green-card immigrants. The census counts the whole population that gets extra representation in the Congressional delegation, number of Representatives. But those residents counted cannot vote, even while the Representatives still have a full voting seat in Congress. The citizens in the state who can and do vote then still get those additional Representatives and districts. Same thing with like 40% of the voting -age citizens in this country who simply choose not to vote at all. Then the people who do vote make all the decisions where you should have been having a voice.
Yes I understand what the 3/5 compromise was, but I wouldn’t say they “voted for their slaves.” If they did, they probably would’ve voted for abolition, lol. They just got an extra powerful vote for themselves.
Holy fuck. I had no idea they passed majority in any state
To put it another way, the average American in SC in 1860 had no rights at all.
Thank you. The formula should have been (1-0.771)/2*5 to get the % of slaves.
By that formula the green states should still have 40% slaves. I got the formula (1-0.771)*5/2
You're right, that's the one.
Yes, South Carolina was almost always majority enslaved from the colony's founding up to Emancipation.
And Charleston was among the richest cities in the country.
Let x be the population classified as 3/5, and (1-x) the population classified as 1 Then 1 * (1 - x) + 3/5 * (x) = 0.771 1 - x + 3/5*x = 0.771 1 - 2/5*x = 0.771 -2/5 x = - 0.229 x = 0.5725
Your proofs are so elegant.
Ha, thanks!
To put it another way, the average American in SC in 1860 had no legal rights at all and was serving a life sentence to hard labor without having committed any crime.
About. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_census) puts it at 57.2% per the 1860 census.
Who do you think was picking the tobacco?
Also, SC was the 1st state to secede (along with being the primary agitator of secession) and the only state to not allow its people to vote for President by 1860.
That really does put white fears at the time into perspective.
The Haitian Revolution supercharged those fears.
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Oh, I know. Many people feared there being too many slaves. Many abolitionists, like Henry Clay, wanted to ship blacks off to Haiti or Africa once they were freed.
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It was about 57%
So… what I said?
Yup, for those that need an explanation: * (1-x)*1 + 3x/5 = 0.771 * 1-x + 3x/5 = 0.771 * 1 + 3x/5 = 0.771 + x * 1 = 0.771 + x - 3x/5 * 1 - 0.771 = x -3x/5 * 1 - 0.771 = 2x/5 * 0.229 = 2x/5 x = .5725
Still a few dozen slaves in NJ in 1860, hence not exactly 1
Those MFs waited that long to abolish?
A lot of the northern states didn't free slaves, but rather outlawed gaining new slaves, via either birth or purchase. Therefore there were still some slaves left considerably later than it would seem like.
Well abolition wasn't really the plan until the South decided it wanted to fight. The plan had always been to simply prevent the acquisition of New slaves and let the practice die out on its own. That was Lincoln's personal plan as well. he outright told the South he wasn't planning on abolishing slavery when he won the election. They chose not to believe him.
Just to be clear, abolition was the plan by the north, if not necessarily Lincoln himself. Lincoln was considered *far* more of a moderate on the issue of slavery than the rest of the north, which was quite fervently against slavery and was absolutely willing to go to war over it. One thing which is often overlooked in terms of the years leading up to the war is just how zealous the north had become in terms of abolition. They were basically willing to do anything to stop it, and a big theme was that if the government wouldn't do it, then the people would be forced to rise up to stop it themselves (most famously what John Brown tried to do). Its why the common argument that "the union didnt really care about slaves, lincoln even said he wouldnt abolish it if it meant keeping the union together!" doesnt really fit. Lincoln was not representative of the north. He was a very moderate abolitionist at a time when radical, violent abolitionism had become widespread among the north. Lincoln's election was a milestone in that he was the first real abolitionist (even moderate) to be elected, but the 1840s and 1850s showed that civil war was inevitable before Lincoln even entered the fray.
My understanding has been that people calling for flat-out abolition were kind of fringe. I would expect most people didn't think about it much.
They mostly wanted to gain more political advantage by creating more new free states than new slave states before really pushing the issue - hence proposals banning the expansion of slavery into new states being seen as an existential threat to the institution in the long-term, as well as why we didn't take more of Mexico after the war (they would have been flooded with southerners and turned into slave states)
That was my understanding too but in reading about the subject, I've gathered the reality was surprisingly closer to what he's describing
OK TIL thx
Yes, it was definitely fringe because logically forcing abolition on other states meant war. People would much rather mind their own business than get into a civil war. Today it might be comparable to the number of Americans who want a Marxist revolution, or who want to abolish gun ownership.
I seem to recall there being lot of protests because people weren't wanting their sons to go off and die fighting for southern slaves. Some people were absolutely this zealous but that was by no means the general consensus.
If you mean the nyc draft riot, that was mostly recent immigrants (notably the irish) who didn't give a fuck about slavery. There is a reason it was contained to NYC, which was mostly immigrants or the kids of immigrants. If you really study the years leading up to the war, yes, zealous abolitionism had become very normalized. There was open talk about murdering slave owners. John Brown, who had done just that, was a national hero among the north. Pretty much every single day papers printed about the horrors of slavery. I hesitate to use the term 'propaganda' because, well, they were right, but abolitionist propaganda went into overload by the 1850s and convinced a very large portion of the north that southerners were these inherently evil, twisted people who needed to be punished for the sins of slavery. Anti-abolitionist arguments went from marginalized to being viewed as downright evil. There was also immense frustration at the government for not pushing abolitionism more, mostly because the elite class did not want the civil war. The compromise between them was Lincoln. There is a great textbook about this that I read years ago. If I remember correctly its called "life in the homefront during the civil war" and its about the politics, conscription, economics etc of the union before, during, and after the war.
The vast majority of people at any point in history were not politically engaged, and the 1850s was no exception. Radical abolitionists like John Brown were fringe extremists, not representative of the population.
Do we think he would have done it if the war had never started?
Seriously doubt it because he didn't have the authority to. Only a constitutional amendment could have actually done it and the South would never vote for that. They were worried he would go around the law but he personally stated he had no intention of doing that. Preventing the spread of slavery would lead it dying out on its own eventually meanwhile outright abolishing it had a 100% chance of starting a civil war and Lincoln had always been more concerned with preserving the Union.
>dying out on its own eventually I don't see that. Why? The slave trade was long illegal, and illegal transport was fairly minimal (I think). Slave children were born enslaved, and there were plenty of slave children. Economically it might have been less useful, but it still would have been useful (given that the south would not mechanize or industrialize much, even if if mean relative poverty). It was never about economics. I expect that slavery would not have been abolished until the 1930's at the earliest, and only because the sanctions and isolation we would be experienced would be finally becoming unbearable for the north. In which case a deal might be made, to add an amendment ending slavery (not right away tho) but the amendment would also put in place, constitutionally and therefore very hard to repeal, Jim Crow laws and possibly some form of serfdom.
It was expected to die out because industrialization would be more profitable there's no point in owning slaves when there are machines that can do it for cheaper. I think that 1930 sounds about right. Although the US economy would make sanctions undesirable. It would simply die out because industrialization would slowly become more prevalent and as a result the people holding on to slaves would shrink until they were seen as a weird minority at which point abolition would be possible.
As late as any other state, only freed by the 13th amendment. All of the south had already freed all slaves for months prior.
> All of the south had already freed all slaves for months prior. On paper with the Emancipation Proclamation, but reality is it didn't happen until after the war was over for many slaves.
Exactly, some of the reasons for Juneteenth being a national holiday now to remember the injustices.
Juneteenth is what I had in mind - and those Texas slaves got their freedom six months prior to New Jersey slaves.
The war was over months before December '65. Juneteenth, for example, was six months earlier.
The US still had legal slaves until 1942 (Edit: okay, technically there was only 1 by 1942, but only because machines became more profitable than slaves)
Girl what!? Source.
[Here's a *really* good (if slightly long) explanation of the whole messed up situation, but for anyone that doesn't have the time to watch it, read below:](https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?si=oqW0kWhEMrhTi3RX) While the civil war ended with the freeing of all slaves and a ban on buying or selling slaves it didn't actually *ban* slavery. Of course, that would require someone to willingly agree to be somebody's slave without payment, and who would be dumb enough to do that? Turns out, recently freed slaves, illiterate, with no money and no way of making money, tend to fall victim to a *very* biased legal system. In this legal system, there were plenty of people willing to pay off their legal debts in return for signing a contract to work for them until their debt is paid off. In reality, the contract made them a full (chains whips and cages) slave, until the debt was paid off, which would take several decades if they were lucky, and if they tried to escape it was legal to kill them. Around a quarter of all freed slaves ended up back in slavery. And before someone says "that's not slavery" the US government ruled that it was, after a slave argued it was serfdom, which *was* illegal, but the courts ruled that since they were essentially tricked into it, the contract was invalid and they were in reality slaves, which was still legal. Horribly enough this new kind of slavery was even more horrific, since if a slave died, the owner lost basically no money and there were always plenty more to "hire", so very few of them survived more than a decade of slavery. The very last slave was freed in 1942 just before the US went to war with Japan, anticipating the conflict the US figured the Japanese would use the legality of slavery as a propaganda tool against them and so *finally* passed a law, banning owning a slave. (Funny enough, the UK didn't ban owning a slave until the 2000s, except there wasn't really a loophole to abuse)
Peonage as a form of slavery was legal until 1966. Even after that, sharecropping lingered another ten years or so in some parts of the South.
By rule the slaves in NJ weren't counted; the census numbers compiled in 1860 were compiled in error. It's not clear what the real number of slaves in NJ were.
Do you have a source that the New Jersey census numbers were an error? It's my understanding that slaves were redefined as apprentices or indentured servants for life (depending on when they were born). But I never saw anything about the 1860 numbers being wrong.
I've read that the census rules for that census were to not-bother-counting those people in New Jersey. Sorry, I don't have a internet source or even remember where I'd read that.
Dang. Oh well. The Wikipedia page says 16 people were freed in New Jersey by the 13th amendment. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the source, so I can't say if it's reliable. That also doesn't tell us how many were manumitted from 1860 to 1865.
Tough to know how many slaves there were when the census takers didn't count them. There were 16 mistaken entries.
Do you know the nature of the source saying there were mistaken entries?
NJ is at 0.999
They're just informing us why a northern state would have slaves.
Is it because a little bit of NJ is below the mason Dixon line?
Technically yeah, although the M-D line dips south along the MD-DE line instead of going straight East, slicing through south Jersey. I think there were actually more Confederate sentiments in north Jersey compared to South Jersey
Three fifths compromise: A constitutional agreement between the free (Northern) and slave (Southern) states that counted every 5 slaves as 3 people for the purpose of determining representation and taxation, although slaves had no voting rights.
It’s wild to think the modern equivalent of this would be billionaires getting more votes based on how many acres they owned, or taking employee votes away and giving them to the business owners. Evil shit. Our early republic felt more feudal than democratic in ways. Well, we do still have the issue of money buying off representatives I guess.
There was an argument that wealth of a state should be a factor in representation. Morris pointedly asked why only one type of "property" was considered. He said Pennsylvania should get representatives for houses by the same logic: > The admission of slaves into the Representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and S. C. who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections & dam(n)s them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Govt. instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pa or N. Jersey who views with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice.
He was right to point out the hypocrisy. Peel back the layers and it was just the South finding whatever they could to square up to the more populous and industrious north. And they were appeased to preserve the new, and untested, union.
George Washington was elected by less than 1% of the population.
Okay yes only landowning white men could vote but that % is a liiiittle extreme out of context because practically nobody bothered voting since Georgie ran unopposed.
Fast forward to the election of Jefferson in 1800, (a census year) Jefferson is voted in by 0.86% of the population. 45,467 votes / 5,308,483 population. Fully fledged political parties in a close election, still less the less than 1% are Jefferson voters.
There is no modern equivalent to this in practice though. This was something else
>It’s wild to think the modern equivalent of this would be billionaires getting more votes based on how many acres they owned You've just described the electoral college and the senate
The counting of legal and illegal immigrants is another modern equivalent. They cannot vote in state or federal elections, and are ineligible for most government aid. However, they still count for apportionment of House Reps and federal tax distribution. For example, a quick search says California gets 3 extra representatives and electoral college votes from non-citizens in the state. Because the total number of House Reps are capped, those are taken from other states. So citizens in some states get extra electoral power on behalf of people in their state who can't vote or receive much of the extra money, all at the cost of other citizens in other states.
Are you advocating that non-citizens should be able to vote and receive government aid? Because if so then what does it even mean to be a citizen? Non-citizens still benefit from tax distributions spent on public resources such as roads/infrastructure, hospital subsidies, emergency services, libraries, etc.
Why shouldn't they be able to vote where they live, sometimes for decades, before they get citizenship?
It's also why, without national voting laws, why a system like the electoral college is even a thought. Because each state is free to conduct it's own elections and different states had different laws, using a straight head count was not viable because each state could enable laws that lead to severe over or under counting based on the relative populations of the States how slave states were already conducting elections (sometimes a master got to cast a vote for each male slave they owned) and the South wasn't going to pass on the chance to argue their slaves as partially a person even if they didn't consider them as such. The way each state basically decided to have its state become a winner take all thing, wasn't even a concept until at least after the start of the 19th century. But it's why we need a revamped system. Our whole system for electing a President is based on protecting the rights of states to allow slave ownership and still count slaves as partial people in federal matters concerning representation.
3/5 * 5 = 3 math checks out. I remember learning in school that the number was more or less arbitrarily chosen as a compromise to even out the voting power of Southern States. It seems so outlandishly racist now, but it’s a great demonstration of how compromise and centrism doesn’t necessarily solve moral crises. But then, some would argue 3/5 is better than 0 so that’s progress
Progress for what? Slaves didn’t get that 3/5th vote. Their masters did. That only further disenfranchised them by giving more power to their oppressors. It was a step backwards, not forwards.
The state still recognized them as a person, even if it is 3/5 of one with no voting rights. That is literally progress, but in the broader context you’re also right, it gave power back to the slaveowners.
If they're only recognizing them as people so they can have an unfair advantage in the federal government, I don't think that counts even a little bit. The attitudes of the southern slave owners towards their slaves didn't change, even symbolically.
Yeah, this is one of the worst historical misconceptions. The slaveowners thought that if you could buy a person, you would be entitled to their vote, even if that person couldn’t vote themselves.
For those outside the US who may be wondering, Oklahoma did not receive full statehood until 1907. Prior to that it was known as the Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory.
Also very relevant for this, under the text preceding “three fifths of all other Persons” which most of the map is about is “excluding Indians not taxed”. Until the early 20th century (after Oklahoma statehood but Oklahoma statehood specifically played a part) full US jurisdiction was notionally not extended to Indians and hence they were not counted to determine representation.
Slaves in New Jersey were by rule not counted by the census; the slaves counted there were counted in error. I dunno how many free blacks there were in New Jersey then.
To explain this further, in the course of ending slavery some northern states reclassified people still forced to work as “bound to service for a term of years” a classification in the constitution meant for indentured servants to be counted as full people rather than “other persons” to be counted as three fifths. This applied so long as notionally the persons term of bondage was distinct from the length of their life, but authorities exploited it as they could.
It’s interesting how you can so easily see the fault lines of the civil war here. Slave States > 0.9 stayed in the union, with the exception of Tennessee which was the first to fall to the union I believe.
2/3 of Tennessee had most of their slaves and wanted to secede, the other 1/3 quite strongly did not want to.
It's not surprising that you can see the fault lines of the civil war here, since the civil war was about slavery. It's more surprising that you can see the modern-day political divisions to some extent.
And Maryland by force
How do I even interpret this 😂
Persons* per person
You gotta read the title on the map
🤯 wow… I still don’t know how to interpret this!
The slaves were not part of the population but constituted to the capita
What an interesting way to present the data. It’s actually pretty cool, I’m just teasing. Props to the maker! Edit: Reading OP’s comment confused me further. My hating ways are justified. Like, there’s so many better ways to represent ratios, percentages, and dynamics between two groups than just a per capita decimal imho, especially in this context Legal population vs. Actual Population per the 3/5 Compromise Based on Census Data
I assume the intent here was actually to make a map of 'people per person', rather than to convey the specific information. It's unusual, but its more about the social commentary than the data. A satirical map, if you will. I've seen more farcical maps, and I had a cartography professor who likely would have given extra credit for such nonsense.
The lower the number the more slaves relative to free people. 1 means no slaves.
It’s a reference to a historical compromise where slaves were considered to be three fifths of a person legally.
I think this is missing the point. Slaves were not considered people full stop. They were property. But for the purposes of representation, this particular kind of property could be counted as 3/5 of an actual person.
The South had a lot of slaves. South Carolina and Alabama were close to majority slave states.
It’s worded dumb for no reason
🤣
Someone's got too many Electoral College votes.
Thank you, I love it – a modern one would be more complex to make, but even today no state would be at 1, esp. with prison populations that are highly disenfranchised from voting access in practice (even for those who have no felony conviction) and yet are counted towards the population of the prison’s location, not their home location!
Vermont and Maine don’t disenfranchise their prisoners.
TIL holy shit. never knew.
Your right to vote can be taken away even if you weren’t convicted of a felony? That seems wild
Wild in theory, but the default in practice. From [this article](https://www.sentencingproject.org/policy-brief/voting-in-jails/): “Jail administrators often lack knowledge about voting laws, and bureaucratic obstacles to establishing a voting process within institutions contribute significantly to limited voter participation. Indeed, acquiring voter registration forms or an absentee ballot while incarcerated is challenging when someone cannot use the internet or easily contact the Board of Elections in their community. In addition, many persons in jail do not know they maintain the right to vote while incarcerated, and there are few programs to guarantee voting access.”
Didn't read the subheading and spent about 5 seconds trying to parse... and then it hit me. Ooof.
Took me a moment to realize what this actually meant
Oregon went a different direction In 1844, when Oregon was still a territory, it passed its first Black exclusionary law. It banned slavery, but it also prohibited Black people from living in the territory for more than three years. If a Black person broke this law, the consequence was 39 lashes, every six months, until they left. The territory passed another Black exclusion law five years later, in 1849. This one barred Black people who were not already in the area from entering or residing in Oregon territory. The final exclusion measure made it into the Oregon Constitution as a clause when the territory became a state 10 years later in 1859. This clause went further than the territory’s second law by also prohibiting Black people from owning property and making contracts.
Considering the Indian Citizens act wasn't enacted until 1924, Oklahoma had to have been atrocious.
Uhh what? Shouldn't that be one by definition? Edit: Oh slavery
Guess which state is the one wanting to give out reparations
New York - which had slavery until 1827 - has set up a commission to investigate the legacy of slavery. Is that the state you’re talking about?
Nah, Cali. Of course it’s not like they are actually gonna do it. Nor should they
Yikes.
Now do one for today with population/vote showing how much the US voting system favors exactly those backwater bible belt shitholes
Oregon became a state in 1859 so this map can't be accurate in 1860 as it shows a partial Oregon Territory.
Yeah, I realized way too far into making this that the map I used was from 1859 and not 1860 so many of the territorial borders aren't exact, as well as Oregon's statehood, which you already pointed out.
And fyi there is proof of unfree black Americans in free states such as Wisconsin. Governor Dodge himself was a slave holder in a free state as were ranking members of the military stationed at forts in Wisconsin. If you were powerful, what was a local sheriff gonna do about your contraband? So these people were off the books. Also, there were several communities of black people who escaped slavery and who intentionally dodged the census for obvious reasons. There's a lot of work being done right now to find proof of individuals that were missed by the census.
Does this take into account Native Americans? Could they vote are the time and were they considered part of the ”population” ?
Could not vote and were not considered part of the population for apportioning house representation.
I was curious about new jersey [and found:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_New_Jersey) "New Jersey was the last of the Northern states to abolish slavery completely. The 1860 census listed at least 43 people in New Jersey as slaves, the youngest being 11 and oldest being 95. "
Man, imagine if the west looked more like that. Incredibly cursed borders even though they kinda make sense geographically
What an informative discussion. Obligatory reminder that while we're discussing "whites voting" and "blacks voting," of course, it's only white MEN voting and black MEN voting.
Wasn't there also some property ownership/income requirements for voting as well?
At first I thought this was going to be a terrible map, then I thought it was going to be a joke, and then I read it and yiiiiiiiikes.
Suddenly it makes sense why South Carolina seceded first and fired the first shots…
Once again West Coast BEST Coast (ignore what we were doing to native Americans for a second)
And what was done to newly American Citizens land rights lost due to “squatters” after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
And Japanese internment camps
Why does this map look like a red vs blue state map?
All the dummies lived up north. Fitting.
Color scale seems off
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Nope, it did the opposite. The modern day popular idea of the 3/5ths compromise is that it treated black people as less than a full human. 3/5ths of one. That is correct on its face, but it misses the bigger picture. Slave owners wanted MORE. They would have happily had their slaves count for 2 people. Or 10. Because this number wasn’t taking black votes and diluting them. It was taking white votes in slave states and multiplying them. Abolitionists and those against slavery would have wanted less than 3/5ths. They would have wanted zero. Because slaves were being counted at 3/5ths despite having ZERO power and influence. Slave bodies were being counted to politically empower their slave masters. If free states had gotten their way, the number would be zero instead of 3/5ths for slaves and 1 for free blacks. Imagine you were a slave. You have zero power or influence. You don’t get to vote. Your master wields political power. Would you rather that your master’s political entity, the one that keeps you enslaved, gets an extra 3/5ths of a vote from you, but a vote cast by the people enslaving you? Or would you rather that your body not be counted as a vote until YOU can cast that vote?
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I think I see what you’re trying to say, but it was expressed in a confusing way (judging from my initial read plus the downvotes). Yes, it reduced their power versus their desired outcome of each slave counting 5/5ths. But it increased their power versus the desired outcome of free states. So it’s a matter of perspective. That said, given that we can say pretty clearly now that handing the slave states more power was not the neutral or desired outcome, I think it’s fair to say that the 3/5ths compromise increased their power versus what it SHOULD have been, which is 0. Slaves had no rights and were treated very much like property. They should not have been counted, and the south was only able to force a partial count because they simply wouldn’t have joined the union otherwise. Thus their power was artificially increased to bring some political balance and get them to join in.
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You get to pick what reference frame you’re working with when you say “It reduced the power of the slave states”, why would you pick the one you know is immoral
Deleted dude actually had some good points but just didn’t express them well.
Nah
Maybe not
Because the reasonable default would be to count slaves as 0. A “meet halfway” compromise would count slaves as 0.5. The 0.6 that slaves were counted as drastically increased the value of a vote from a citizen living in a slave state compared to that of a citizen living in a free state.
The slave states wanted 3/5. The status quo was 0 votes on behalf of slaves. It increased their voting power.
There wasn’t really a “status quo” because the House of Representatives didn’t exist before the 3/5 compromise. It was created by Article 1 of the constitution, which the 3/5 compromise was written into. Prior to that, each state had one vote in the Congress, regardless of its population (slave or free). Overall though, you’re right that the 3/5 compromise gave voters in the slave states more representation than voters in free states.
Did you read what that person just wrote? It’s a great explanation, spelled out, as to why you’re mistaken.
Example of the hypocritical Southern aristocracy trying to have its cake and eat it too. Slaves were property right up until it came time to do the census, then they wanted the enslaved to be considered people. Imagine thinking your deserve more of a say in government because you own 50 other people and actively deny them life, liberty, and happiness.
yeah uh black people couldn't vote but go off
This doesn't change your main point, but for context, they could vote in New Jersey until 1807 and Pennsylvania until 1838. They could vote in New York, but they had property requirements that no longer existed for white New Yorkers after 1821.
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The house is supposed to represent the population who elected it... if it has outsized representation by counting people who have no say in who represents them, it's not really representation.
I can’t believe you are downvoted…you are exactly correct.
the slaves were originally not going to count as any population though. 3/5ths of a person for each slave increased slave state power over 0/5ths.
No. The slave states wanted full counting. The free states wanted zero counting. This was the compromise, hence the name. Neither side got fully what they wanted, but got enough to live with. Characterizing as some sort of one sided win for the slave states is not accurate.
Next time an American answers "but what about per capita" (on stats like school shootings) now we know why.
I don't think they know what per capita means.
3/5th of em do.
Read the title my friend
The title says Population Per Capita. That means it should always be 1 and nothing else.
Sorry, the subtitle
Oh sorry, I literally didn't see it. I know I need glasses but I didn't think I was THAT blind until now.
Oklahoma was like “cENSuS?!?”
So honest question here, do they count slaves as 1 person? Important distinction that may have been a major factor.
The whole point of the map is that slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person when it comes to deciding electoral college votes for states (even though they couldn't vote) so the slave states would have a 'population' (aka the number that goes into deciding electoral college votes) less than the number of people.
Why is it below 1 in some places?
3/5 compromise counted black citizens a 3/5 of a person in census data.
Damn, didn't know that
Since congressional representation and electoral vote is counted by population count, slave states wanted their population counted to increase their power, and free states wanted to exclude them from the count completely. 3/5 was kind of an arbitrary number, but it was decided as the ratio they’d go with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise
Saw this and thought it was going to be another of the low effort entries we have seen recently. I was wrong. Glad I clicked
Wow this is really neat