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The typical college freshman has been told that the “three-fifths clause” of the Constitution meant that the Framers claimed that blacks were just three-fifths of a person. This silly rendition obscures the Framers’ true intent. In determining the number of representatives Southern states should have in the House, Southern states argued that slaves should be fully counted. Northerners did not think the slaves should be counted at all. The compromise was that slaves should be counted as three-fifths of a free person when determining representation. This compromise on a very contentious issue was not a statement about black people as “three-fifths of a person” in any metaphysical or biological sense. Those who call the Constitution “racist” miss the point. Ironically, if slaves had been counted as five-fifths of a free person, then the Southern states — where slaves and slavery were concentrated at the time — would have had more power in the federal government.
–Chapter 3, “The Constitution”
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Was the war fought to free the slaves?
No one who has studied the issue would dispute that for at least the first eighteen months of the war, the abolition of slavery was not the issue.
The U.S. Senate declared from the beginning that the purpose of the war was to restore the Union and that there was no other objective. They passed the following resolution on July 26, 1861:
Resolved, That the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country by the disunionists of the southern and northern States, that in this national emergency Congress, banishing all feeling of mere passion or resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country; that this war is not prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.
In 1861, a proposed amendment to the Constitution would have explicitly stated that the federal government had no authority — ever — to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed.
–Chapter 6, “The War Between the States”
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Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
