Given that the Republicans in the US House just had their Constitution reading, many of the Liberals have brought out the canard that since Republicans (and by association, TEA Partiers) with to go back to when Constitutional values held sway, we all must be in favor of going back to slavery at worst, and at best, only want to think of blacks as 3/5’s of a human.
Nonsense….and once again, we see people trying to make political hay without knowing their history….which makes them look rather cheesy and slipshod. This snippet from Newsbusters is probably the best that I have seen for clearly outlining the actual history (emphasis mine):
The South (during the era of slavery) wanted to include blacks in the population tally so they could increase the number of pro-slavery congressional representatives. It took 30,000 people to get one congressman, and slaves outnumbered whites in slave states. It was the Democrat hope that with enough pro-slavery congressmen, they could overturn much of the abolitionist legislation Northern Republicans had previously passed.
However, there was one philosophical problem: blacks in Southern states had no rights thus The North deemed it a joke they only be counted when beneficial to Democrats. Northern abolitionists argued that since The South considered blacks their property, all "property" should be counted for the purpose of determining congressional representation. Thus the Northern abolitionists would include their property: horses, cattle, homes, furniture, pets, etc. in their population tallies.
The South denounced the proposal, so anti-slavery northerner James Wilson of Pennsylvania came up with a compromise.
Blacks in the Southern states would be counted as "three-fifths" of a person. That way, it would take 50,000 people (instead of 30,000) in a district to earn congressional representation. That had the effect of limiting the power of the slave states.
It had NOTHING to do with the worth of a person and EVERYTHING to do with diminishing the power of Southern racists, like those progressives at the New York Times today who continue to distort the history of an entire people purely for political gain.
And remember, it was the Democrats that had welcomed a Grand Kleagle of the KKK into their midst as a US Senator: Robert Bird.
Hypocrites.
