Slavery in America -- Three Compromises, All Compromised Wrong -- the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the Compromise of 1850
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal" -- except for Black American men, of course, who are only 3/5ths equal, according to the Constitution of the United States. The ringing words about equality, penned by Jefferson, a guilty-minded slaveholder sound far less inspiring when wording from the actual text of the Constitution of the framers is incorporated into the text of the Declaration of Independence that he authored in 1776.
The 3/5ths compromise sounds bizarre simply on its surface -- it stated that enslaved human beings would count, for taxation and population counts for the Electoral College, as 3/5ths of a person. The conflict reflects one of the central problems of the Constitutional Convention. The convention was torn between the desire between the value the American Southern states placed upon state's rights and the Northern states' desire to have a stronger federal government that could curtail and limit the spread of the Southern way of life and the South's so-called peculiar institution. (Slavery Compromises, 2004)
The South, however, believed that slaves should count in their influence in Congress, even if these slaves were treated as chattel and could not vote. Thus, despite the fact even the slaveholding Jefferson, as well as the other founding fathers believed slavery to be...
The spirit of the Master is abating," the compromise was included to placate the Southern states. (Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson; "Slavery Compromises," 2004)
Thus, slavery was incorporated into the constitution in an absurdity -- legally and logically -- and as a compromise that pleased no one. Even at the time, Jefferson said, "We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is on one scale, and self- preservation in the other." But because "Cotton is King!" As Hammond of South Carolina countered, the compromise was allowed to stand -- at least while America remained, North and South, largely agrarian and thus more sympathetic to the Southern economic needs.
But while the North and the South were conflicted politically over the strength of the federal government from 1776-1819, the industrialization of the North and expansion to the West from 1820-1850 pushed the two regions still further. The Missouri Compromise came into being 1820 when many of the people who had helped settle that new territory were slave owners and wished to keep their slaves after Missouri became a state, despite Congress' avowed intent to prevent the spread of slavery. It had been argued that even if the South could not be bankrupted for the good of the national economy, at least the spread of slavery could be…
