American Inheritance by Edward J. Larson

Author:Edward J. Larson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2022-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

Breaking with the Articles, the plans presented by Randolph and Pinckney both provided for proportional representation in the lower branch of Congress. Befitting a proposal advanced by delegates from two different large states—Virginia with the most enslaved people of any state and Pennsylvania with the most free ones—the Virginia Plan straddled the fence on slavery. Using the neutral phrase “quotas of contribution,” which those present understood to mean counting all people (enslaved and free) as a rough gauge of state contributions to the union, the proposal read, “Legislature ought to be proportioned to the Quotas of contribution, or to the number of free inhabitants, as the one or the other rule may seem best in different cases.”36 In short, the Virginia Plan left it to the convention to decide the key issue of counting all people or just free people for purposes of representation. Counting all people would favor southern states; counting only free people would favor northern states. Compounding the impact of any rule of representation for the lower branch of Congress, the Virginia and Pinckney plans had that chamber selecting the upper one (or Senate) and the entire Congress picking the president, so all power turned on how the lower branch was apportioned.37

Whip-smart and direct—a fellow delegate would say that he spoke with great “perspicuity . . . without running into prolixity”—Pinckney, representing only himself and his state, cut to the chase in his plan.38 Reaching back to a 1783 congressional compromise for allocating financial requisitions among the states, Pinckney proposed that the lower branch of Congress “consist of one Member for every _____ thousand inhabitants 3/5 of Blacks included.”39 Drawing on the 1783 compromise, by “Blacks” he meant enslaved people (whether Black, Native American, or mixed-race) and not free Blacks. This ratio, Pinckney presumably reasoned, would net southern whites as much added representation for their enslaved people as they could expect in a convention dominated by northern states. Of course, he did not envision enslaved Blacks casting three-fifths of a vote. No Blacks, free or enslaved, could vote in Virginia, Georgia, or (after 1790) South Carolina, and yet free Blacks there, like women, children, and non-landowning whites—who could not vote in most states—would count as a full person for purposes of representation.

Modern commentators generally agree that, while the three-fifths compromise made some sense as a measure of a state’s wealth for assigning contributions, it was arbitrary as a rule of representation.40 At the time, even critics of slavery like Franklin conceded that enslaved workers generated less wealth than free ones.41 While delegates might believe that the enslaved generated about three-fifths as much wealth as free people, all of them knew that no enslaved Black would receive any representation under the three-fifths compromise. It empowered slaveholders, not the enslaved.

As arbitrary as it was, the three-fifths compromise acted like a riptide sucking in delegates no matter how much they tried to swim against it.42 Setting aside Pinckney’s proposal to work through the Virginia Plan resolution by resolution, the convention

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