I was listening to the Glenn Beck radio program today as he ranted about the Congressman reading the Constitution in the House of Repersentatives. His rant was about their NOT reading Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3. This is commonly called the 3/5 clause and reads,
"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."
Now Mr. Beck was all upset because this was about the original sin of Slavery and the South.
Somebody needs to educate Mr. Beck that the United States Constitutuion that the U.S. Constitution was not written in 1860, but was written in 1787 when all state (except maybe Massachusette) were slave states. That in fact this clause was a proposed amendmet in 1783 to the Articles of Confederation, which was to have changed the basis for determining the wealth of each state, and hence its tax obligations, from real estate to population, as a measure of ability to produce wealth.
The southern states objected to this proposal because it meant that slave holder would have to pay more in taxes because of the number of slaves that they may own and felt that slaves like the Indians mentioned should not be counted and not be taxed.
Even at that the largest slave holding state, and one of the two States that could have single handedly Killed the new United States being formed in 1787 was not a southern state, but a place called New York, which was the birth place of slavery in American under the Dutch of New Amsterdam, where they worked the docks and where the largest slave cemetery in located under the streets of Manhatten. In the 1740's 20% of the population of New York were slaves. So I wish that someone in Mr. Becks research staff would actually do some RESEARCH and inform Mr. Beck and everyone else that the Northern States actually had a vested interest in the slaves and THE SLAVE TRADE, at the time the Constitution was written.