Less than 75 years after the ratification of the Constitution, the country had dissolved, both sides insisting that THEY were the ones who were upholding the Constitution. This conflict was foreshadowed during the writing and debates on the Constitution and in the Federalist Papers that advocated adoption of the Constitution.
The man who both wrote and managed the debates over the Constitution, James Madison, recognized that he faced several sources of disagreement: small states vs. large, advocates of a strong federal authority vs. opponents, etc. But by the end of the Constitutional Convention, he recognized the real problem: “It seems now to be pretty well understood that the real difference of interests lies not between the large and small but between the northern and southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences form the line of discrimination.”
The Framers addressed the institution of slavery several times. They showed a certain delicacy, never using the word “slave” and instead usings euphemisms such as “other persons,” “such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit,” or “person held to Service or Labour.”
The three sections where slavery was addressed (all of which were eliminated by the13th Amendment) included:
The three-fifth’s compromise (Art. 1, sec 2), which provided that “Representation and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several states … according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound for service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
Slave trade (Art 1, sec 9). “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight.”
Fugitive Slave clause (Art 4, sec 2). “No person held to Service or Labour in one State … escaping to another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party t whom such Service or Labour may be due.”
Madison addressed the three-fifth’s compromise in Federalist 54, “The Apportionment of Members Among the States.” Under the Articles of Confederation, every state had the same representation, and taxes were apportioned by land value, which gave states an incentive to under-estimate land values. Madison reasoned that basing both representation and taxation on population would cancel the tendency to over- or under-count population. But that left the question of how (or whether) enslaved persons would count in a state’s population total. Southern states argued that enslaved people were more than mere property because they are subject to human laws (e.g., they can be punished for crimes). Therefore, southerners argued that they deserved to be factored into the state’s population for representation. Madison also argued that because enslaved people provide labor and generate wealth, their numbers also reflect a state’s economic capacity. The three-fifths ratio served as a practical middle ground to balance the political representation of the states without disproportionately skewing tax obligations.
Madison’s discussion (and the Convention debates on the 3/5ths Compromise) had nothing to do with the morality of slavery; the debate was entirely about apportionment of power. Representation in Congress and electoral votes were at stake. Madison’s essay focused on the necessity of the mathematical compromise to ensure the northern and southern states could unite under a single federal government. Debates about the morality of slavery – and the broader north-south conflict – were put off for another day.
