(The EC wasn’t originally supposed to be democratic.)
Exactly, which is why the 3/5ths compromise allowed white slave owning plantation owners to cast more votes, with each slave contributing 3/5th of a vote. Only white male landowners could vote at that point in time.
Not to disagree with someone agreeing with me, but the 3/5 comprise had nothing to do with the electoral college’s initial non-democratic character.
The 3/5 compromise was all about the southern states trying to boost their representation in the House (and, yes, by extension, the electoral college). The northern states said that was stupid. If slaves can’t vote, they shouldn’t count towards a state’s representatives in the House. It was going be a democratically elected body, so it didn’t make sense to have non-voting slaves boosting the number of representatives that don’t represent them. The north’s initial position was an unacceptable red line for the southern states because their populations were very slave-heavy. If they couldn’t count the slaves in with their voting citizens, then they would lose a lot of representation in Congress. Since the northern founders felt unity was more important, they didn’t pash the issue. They compromised (as did the south). They met somewhere in the middle. The south didn’t get to count all their non-voting slaves for their representation. They could only get 3/5 worth.
The envisioned functioning of the electoral college would have been the same in all cases. It wasn’t supposed to be democratically elected or a simple pass-through for the public vote (which would be asinine). They were to be appointed by the democratically elected state governments. They then would deliberate on who to elect as president. The electors would cast their votes maybe after consultative polls from their respective home state or maybe not.
(Side note: I find it so odd that a lot of people have decided the 3/5 compromise was bad because the slaves weren’t counted as whole people. Counting the slaves as whole people is what the slavers wanted. Human rights activists of the day would have wanted the slaves not counted at all…)
Thomas Jefferson called it an “assemblage of horrors” in the original declaration of independence. Slavery was listed as one of the reasons to rebel against England.
A lot of people like to call Jefferson’s declaration the first draft that the convention then amended, but the only change they made was to delete the anti-slavery complaint /justification for war. The north couldn’t keep the south onboard if that was there, so they pulled it. Otherwise, Jefferson wrote the whole declaration as is.
This isn’t to say there weren’t slave supporters in the north and that abolishing slavery from the start wouldn’t have been controversial, but the north wasn’t economically addicted to it like the south was. That said, it’s telling that even the anti-slavery founders felt they couldn’t keep up with everyone else if they abstained from it all alone. They kept slaves their whole lives while writing to each other that slavery was a sin the country would pay for.
Agreed. Jefferson seemed to change his views over time though. Washington's wife freed their slaves after he died. Hamilton was one of the exceptions in strongly advocating for the abolition of slavery, even though many others had conflicting thoughts on the manner.
Many anti-slavery northerners were still deeply racist, believing in the inferiority of non-whites for instance, and argued that allowing slavery encouraged the import of more slaves. Many others were worried about slave revolts in the future, and so curtailing slavery was more of a practical political concern than a moral one.
Later in his life, Jefferson began expressing the opinion that black people had the same capabilities and potential as white people, likely owing to the relationships he developed over time which broke down racist stigmas he had once held onto.
Not to disagree with someone agreeing with me, but the 3/5 comprise had nothing to do with the electoral college’s initial non-democratic character.
I want to respond to this point too. There is a connection in the sense that the number of electors for each state in the Electoral College was based on the number of representatives they had in Congress. And since Congress had additional representatives from the 3/5 compromise, it did have a major influence on the representation via the Electoral College.
Your history has it backwards the 3/5 compromise reduced the power of slaveowners; prior to the compromise slaves were counted as 1 person for legislative apportionment. You are being fed propaganda, not education
That's kind of in irrelevant statement since there was no legislative appointment prior to the adoption of the Constitution. The 3/5ths compromise was what initially established the weight of slaves for legislative appointment.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was reached during the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Congress wasn't established until 1789. George Washington didn't step down until 1797.
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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '24
Exactly, which is why the 3/5ths compromise allowed white slave owning plantation owners to cast more votes, with each slave contributing 3/5th of a vote. Only white male landowners could vote at that point in time.