Before leaving the office this cold and wet afternoon and retiring from the
Internet for the weekend, let me mention something about the Three-Fifths
Clause.

It is in Article 1, section 3 of the Constitution: "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."

This was arrived at as part of a comprehensive compromise over
representation and taxation, at a time when people assumed that the new
Congress, like the Confederation Congress, would require each state to raise
a specific proportion of the national revenue. Instead of taxing the states,
the federal government taxed commerce (excises on whiskey, duties on
imports, etc., etc., etc.). Another example of the operation of the law of
unintended consequences.

Looking at the actual language, we can see that indentured servants and free
blacks were to be counted like everybody else. Indians were thought to have
a separate identify and were to be treated differently; and slaves, who were
not to be part of the political nation but whose economic value could not be
ignored, were treated this way in response to people who believed that
economic value had as much claim to representation as bodies.

People in states with slaves wanted to have the bodies counted for
representation but not for taxation; people in states without slaves wanted
to have the bodies counted for taxation but not for representation.

States with slaves therefore got some protection from having the whole
number of inhabitants counted for taxation purposes; and they got some gain
in representation in Congress, slaves resembling people (to paragraphse
Roger B. Taney). The states without slaves got--what?

In any event, the specifics of how that clause worked out in American
politics are rather complicated and cannot be considered outside of their
complicated origins and context.

Also: Census enumerators were federal appointees, but insofar as I have paid
attention to census returns and noticed who acted as enumerators, it seems
to me that they were always local men (men back in the days we're talking
about) and not people who didn't already know a good deal about the
community whose members they were counting. They might be very inconsistent
from place to place (or from decade to decade) in describing the skin color
or racial inheritances of people they were counting.

Over and out.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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