Chapter 8: Slavery Is Sanctioned in the 1787 U.S. Constitution

The presence of those enslaved provides a conceptual dilemma for the 53 delegates who gather at Independence Hall in 1787 to draft the United States Constitution. Namely how to square the practice with the heroic declaration that “all men are created equal.” Their answer lies in concluding that the Africans are a “different and lesser species” that white men.

In turn this leads to another issue that threatens the very formation of the Union — how to count the population of slaves, concentrated in the South, for the purpose of allocating seats in the U.S. House of Representatives?

If they are excluded entirely, the South would end up with only 41% of the seats, an outcome they deem unacceptable.

After much acrimony, Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson proposes his “Enumeration Clause” whereby Blacks will be counted as 3/5^th of a full person. This increases the South’s total to 47% of the seats, a number they accept for now, while believing, wrongly, that their population will grow faster than the North given its warmer climate.

Although Wilson’s compromise allows the Union to form, it proves devastating for America’s Blacks by stereotyping them forever as “3/5^ths of a human being,” inferior savages prone to possible violent revenge if ever released.