3/5-Clause
From Unawiki
The 3/5 Clause, or the Three-Fifths Compromise, was the result of a compromise between the northern and southern states during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention, as defined in Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution. Proposed by James Wilson, the Three-Fifths Compromise defined the proportion of the representation of free and slave population in terms of distribution of tax-es on land and, most importantly, the apportionment of the members of the House of Representatives – i.e., statistically 1 slave = 3/5 of a human. In this way, the balance of political influence between the two regions was to be secured, which would have been threatened under a purely proportional representation in the House.
The 3/5 Clause did not address the rights of slaves (e.g., citizenship), however, and served merely as a device of enumeration, considered instrumental in the disproportionate political representation of the southern states. Its 3/5 -character was in fact catering not to the northern states, but to southern fears of possible demands raised by slaves on the basis of their being counted equally.
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (1865) disputed the 3/5 Clause, which was eventually superseded by Section 2 of the 14th Amendment (1868).
The 3/5 Clause has been fervently referenced (e.g., Civil Rights Movement), as proof of the dehumanizing treatment of African Americans, and used to discard any notion of the U.S. Constitution as guarding “certain inalienable rights” such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, or that “all men are created equal”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_compromise http://www.h-net.org/~women//threads/euph.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wilson http://www.law.emory.edu/cms/site/index.php?id=3106#7702
- Kompromiss zw. Nord- und Südstaaten 1787, von James Wilson vorgeschlagen
- Balance gewahrt durch: 1 Sklave = 3/5 Mann => 5 Sklaven = 3 Weiße
- => Südstaaten mit weniger Bev erhielten mehr Repräsentanten
- in Verfassung verankert (§1, Abs.2, Satz 3)#
- 1868: durch 14. Verfassungszusatz aufgehoben
