Definition
At the Constitutional Convention, Southern delegates wanted enslaved people counted toward each state's House seats even though they could not vote, and Northern delegates such as Gouverneur Morris objected. On July 12, 1787, the delegates agreed to count three-fifths of a state's enslaved people, whom Article I called "all other Persons," along with its free population when dividing House seats and direct taxes, the same ratio Congress had proposed in 1783 for dividing its requisitions among the states. Because each state's electors equaled its House seats plus its two senators, the count also gave the South more votes for president. The Constitution never used the word slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment replaced the three-fifths count in 1868.
Why it matters on the AP exam
The clause is one of three ways the Constitution protected slavery without naming it, along with the ban on ending the slave trade before 1808 and the Fugitive Slave Clause, and questions often ask students to identify these protections. It gave slaveholding states more House seats and more electoral votes than their free populations alone would have, so the South held extra power in national politics until the Civil War. A common mistake is to say the clause gave enslaved people a partial vote or any rights; it counted them only to add to the power of the states that enslaved them. Questions on the Convention pair it with the Great Compromise to show how delegates traded on representation, slavery and trade to reach a plan every section would accept.
In the sources
“Are they men? Then make them Citizens and let them vote.”
Connections
- Great Compromise: based House seats on population, which made the count of enslaved people matter
- Slave Trade Clause: kept Congress from banning the import of enslaved people before 1808
- Fugitive Slave Clause: required that a person who escaped slavery into another state be delivered up to the claimant
- Tallmadge Amendment: the 1819 attempt to restrict slavery in Missouri, a fight over the balance of power between the sections
Study it in context
Topic 3.8: The Constitutional Convention and Debates over Ratification Watch this part