The Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble; consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? Or is it in the temple? It is neither. If the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slaveholding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it? Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposes entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.
But if the Constitution is not pro-slavery, then what about the Three-Fifths Clause? Had Douglass not read that clause? Yes, he had. Then how could he conclude what he did about the Constitution? Douglass understood that the Three-Fifths Clause dealt only with representation and not the worth of any individual. The Constitution had established that for every 30,000 inhabitants in a State, that State would receive one representative to Congress.
The southern States saw this as an opportunity to strengthen slavery since slaves accounted for much of the southern population. Therefore, slave owners could simply count their slaves as regular inhabitants, and by so doing could greatly increase the number of their pro-slavery representatives to Congress.
Of course, the anti-slavery Founders from the North strenuously objected to this plan. After all, slave owners did not consider their slaves to be persons but only property; these slave-owners were therefore using their “property” to increase the power of the slave States in Congress. The anti-slavery leaders wanted Free Blacks counted, but not slaves if counting slaves would increase the power of slave owners. They understood that the fewer the pro-slavery representatives to Congress, the sooner slavery could be eradicated from the nation. Governor Morris a signer of the Constitution and a strong opponent of slavery therefore argued:
Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens and let them vote! .
But the admission of slaves into the representation comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the coast of Africa and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondage, shall have more votes in a government instituted for protection of the rights of mankind than the citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who views with a laudable horror so nefarious wicked a practice.
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