Slavery's constitution

About this book

"All other persons: Who were they? They were not free men or women. They were not apprentices or indentured servants. They were not Indians who lived among whites and paid taxes, or those who did not. That left slaves. Three-fifths of the number of slaves in any state would count toward a state's number of congressmen, and three-fifths of them would have to pay when the Congress passed a direct tax. Africans and their descendants were not being defined as three-fifths of a person, as is sometimes said, for that would have implied that the men among them deserved three-fifths of a vote, when they had none, or had three-fifths of a person's rights before the law, when they had much less than that, usually. Rather, their presence was being acknowledged as a source of power and of wealth, for their owners"--Prologue: Meaningful silences, p. 4-5.