Image 1: Washington as Statesman at the Constitutional Convention Junius Brutus Stearns, American, 1810 – 1885 (Artist)”
Refuting the Big Lie That the “Three/Fifths Compromise” Enshrined Slavery in the U. S. Constitution
The “Three/Fifths Compromise 1787” permitted the Southern slave states to count 60% of their slave population for representation—even though slaves were property, not citizens. That compromise did not state—or even imply—that each slave was only “three/fifths of a person.”
Representation, Not Percentage of Personhood
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention [1] met in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787, for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.
That document had proven too weak to address the issues that the newly formed nation was facing. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison had believed that revising the Articles was impossible and that a complete overhaul was necessary.
Thus, the members of the Constitutional Convention scrapped the Articles of Confederation in favor of composing a new document, which, of course, resulted in the Constitution, under which the U.S. has been governed since its ratification.
The convention members were confronted with two problems as they were creating the sections regarding representation in the House of Representatives and the Senate. States with small populations demanded that each state have equal representation, while large states demanded that representation be based of population. The respective demands would guarantee a desired advantage for each state.
The Constitutional conveners thus solved that problem by allowing the upper house to have 2 senators, while the lower house would have a number of representatives based on population.
However, after this fix of representation, a second issue arose: slave states demanded that slaves be counted for purposes of representation, even though slaves would not be afforded the right to vote or otherwise participate in citizenship.
Free states insisted that no slaves be counted because counting non-participating individuals would give the slave states an unfair advantage. That advantage would mean that abolishing slavery would be next to impossible. In effect, if slaves were counted for purposes of representation, that slave count would help perpetuate slavery.
Slaves Were Not Voting Citizens
Slaves possessed no rights of citizenship [2]: they could not vote, run for office, or participate in any civic discussion. Slaves were not citizens; they were property [3] in a similar sense that cattle and cotton were property.
Slave were not even allowed to learn how to read; they were kept illiterate and uneducated in order to keep them subservient. Keeping slaves as property was a priority in the slave states. And by counting slaves, their population would overpower the free states who would seek the end of slavery.
While far from being a perfect solution, the “Three/Fifths Compromise” settled the issue of counting the slave populace: instead of counting the entire population of slaves, it allowed slave states to count three/fifths of that total number for the purpose of representation.
Nowhere in that Compromise or in the Constitution does it state or even imply that each slave is only three/fifths of a person. The sole purpose of the compromise was to determine representation in the House of Representatives, not the percentage of personhood each individual slave possessed.
The slave states demanded full counting of slaves, while the free states demanded that none of the slave population count, because slaves were not citizens.
Following the logic that the “Three/Fifths Compromise” deemed each slave three/fifths of a human, the slave owners were insisting that their slaves were fully human. The free states, who later worked to abolish slavery, were implying that slaves had no personhood at all: Both of those propositions are patently absurd and opposite of the intentions of the slave and free states.
The slave states wanted it both ways essentially: for the purpose of representation, they wanted slaves to be counted as citizens, but in every other capacity, they wanted slaves to remains non-citizens or mere property.
The following excerpt, Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3, from the Constitution [4] shows clearly that the “Three/Fifths Compromise” does not refer to the individual personhood of each slave:
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 Number of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. (emphasis added)
The “three fifths of all other Persons” designates the slave population and any other groups not specifically names; it does not designate that the personhood of each person in those groups is only three/fifths that of a free, tax-paying citizen.
The terms “Negroes,” “black,” “slaves,” and “slavery” do not appear in “Three/Fifths Compromise” of the U.S. Constitution.
The term “slavery” appears in the Thirteenth Amendment to “enshrine” the abolition of that evil institution. The term “slave” appears in the Fourteenth Amendment in the phrase “emancipation of any slave.”
The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed that the former slave-holders could not petition the government for reparations for losing their slaves. Thus, those amendments, added in 1865, were not in place when Frederick Douglass [5], the foremost black abolitionist in the 1840s remarked,
If the Constitution were intended to be by its framers and adopters a slave-holding instrument, then why would neither “slavery,” “slave-holding,” nor “slave” be anywhere found in it?
Image 2: Frederick Douglass Portrait by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times
First Step to the Abolition of Slavery
The founders [6] of the United States of America and framers of the Constitution were well aware of the travesty of slavery and well understood that that institution could not endure, despite the fact that some of them owned plantations supported by slave labor.
However, as it is with most deeply ingrained cultural traditions, that evil societal feature could not be mandated in a document that was needed to help govern the young country.
Possibly, if the free states had insisted that the slave states not count any of their slave population, it would have been impossible to frame the new governing document.
Also possible was the eruption of warring factions that might have resulted in an earlier civil war. Those two eventualities were avoided through the “Three/Fifths Compromise.”
In order to assure that the southern slaves states accept the new document, the framers had to make the concession of allowing those states to count part of their slave population. But that concession can be viewed as the first step toward eradicating slavery from the country. It allowed the Constitution to become the governing document of the young nation.
By the strength of that document’s tenets, the nation was able to end the institution of slavey while remaining unified, after suffering the bloody Civil War that did occur from 1861 to 1865.
The great Founding Father, Frederick Douglass, who worked to abolish slavery understood that the ideals and words of those earlier statesmen had laid the groundwork to eliminate that evil institution. Douglass averred [7],
Notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery . . .
Discerning historians, looking back with an open mind, have determined that certain compromises such as the “Three/Fifths Compromise 1787” have, in fact, functioned for “the downfall of slavery.”
The Three/Fifths Big Lie Persists
False notions known as big lies, have staying power because they have been loudly repeated by the perpetrators until they become ingrained in the culture. Even though the phrase, “the big lie” [8], was popularized by Adolf Hitler [9] and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, American statist politicians have never been immune to employing that concept to smear their opponents.
The “Three/Fifths Compromise 1787” has been widely misrepresented as enshrining slavery in the U. S. Constitution, deeming that a slave was only three/fifths of a person. However, nowhere in the United States Constitution does the text state or even imply that the personhood of each black individual is only “three/fifths of a person.”
That persistent falsehood has been debunked repeatedly, yet it remains part of a popular mythology. The institution of slavery and the decades of Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes remain permanent stains on the history of the United States.
And those issues need to be addressed, explained, and understood, but what Americans do not need is for political operatives to falsify that history to make it more heinous than it was.
The falsehood that blacks were once considered three/fifths of a person needs to be addressed and refuted whenever and wherever it resurfaces. As Malik Simba from BlackPast.org explains,
Often misinterpreted to mean that African Americans as individuals are considered three-fifths of a person or that they are three-fifths of a citizen of the U.S., the three-fifths clause (Article I, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution of 1787) in fact declared that for purposes of representation in Congress, enslaved blacks in a state would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state. [10]
Despite the many explanations and corrections from historians and other Constitutional experts [11], which are widely available online, the false claim that blacks were considered to be only “three/fifths a person” continues to appear regularly.
Some critics assert that the U.S. Constitution enshrined slavery [12] with the “Three/Fifths Compromise of 1787,” and others make the inaccurate statement that blacks in the U.S. were thought to be three/fifths of a person at one point in history.
Two particularly egregious examples of this “big lie” come from two high level, otherwise knowledgeable government officials: Condoleezza Rice [13], 66th Secretary of State and General Mark Milley [14], 20th chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Secretary Rice, in speeches abroad has claimed [15], “In the original U.S. Constitution, I was only three-fifths of a person.” And General Mark Milley, refers to that falsehood, as he mistakes the fraction as “three/fourths” [16] instead of “three/fifths.”
These misstatements by such accomplished and knowledgeable individuals demonstrate how widespread and deep some errors have been carved into the culture. It is past time to discard this “big lie” along with other false notion [17] that the Democratic and Republican Parties switched sides on race.
The accurate teaching of history must become a valued part of education if America is to remain free and prosperous.
Sources
[1] Curators. “Congress Tries to Revise the Articles of Confederation.” Library of Congress. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[2] John Wood. “The Concept of Property and Ownership in the Antebellum American South.” Interstate – Journal of International Affairs. Vol. 2014/2015. NO. 1. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[3] Editors. “Conditions of antebellum slavery.” PBS: Africans in America. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[4] Curators. “The Constitution of the United States.” ConstitutionUS.com. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[5] Angela Sailor, et al. “Slavery and the Constitution.” The Heritage Foundation. February 23, 2021.
[6] Editors. “The Founding Fathers and Slavery.” WallBuilders. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[7] Thomas C. Stewart. “What ex-slave Frederick Douglass thought of the Founding Fathers.” Washington Times. June 30, 2020.
[8] “Big Lie.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary.com. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[9] Admin. “The Big Lie Theory.” Inside. August 12, 2015.
[10] Malik Simba. “The Three-Fifths Clause of the United States Constitution (1787).” BlackPast.org. October 3, 2014.
[11] Steven Philbrick. “Understanding the three-fifths compromise.” Express-News. September 16, 2018.
[12] Mike Bates. “AP: US ‘A Nation That Enshrined Slavery in its Constitution’.” mrcNewsBusters. September 20, 2008.
[13] Curators. “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.” US Department of State. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[14] Curators. “General Mark A. Milley.” US Department of Defense. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[15], Eric Zencey. “Is Condoleezza Rice Right to Say the Founders Believed Blacks Were Only 3/5ths of a Person?” History News Network. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[16] Curator. “Gen. Mark Milley defends teaching ‘critical race theory’ at West Point | New York Post” YouTube. Accessed June 11, 2023.
[17] Linda Sue Grimes. “Debunking the Big Lie That the Democratic and Republican Parties Switched Sides on Race.” Linda’s Literary Home. April 6, 2025.
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