Sunday, March 11, 2018

Foot note 2 .... Constitution 101 ... 3/5 compromise

When they were writing the Constitution the most powerful part of the Government was to be the House of Representatives  as it is the House that controls the power of the purse as you will later learn.
Now seats and thus votes in the House are given by population. The More people in your state the more votes. So the South wanted the slaves counted as part of the population as that would get them more seats in the House. The North said No  if you want to count them as free men, they must be free. It looked like the South would walk but Spain and England and France was still out  there. So  the North and South  compromised. Slaves would be counted but only 60% would go toward gaining seats for the South. ..The South saw this as a victory.

** so it had nothing to do with 3/5 of a person or any of that PC junk..it was about seats in the House.

*** The seats were not given to the slaves  but to the masters who owned them.

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