Books Written Before the 1950s

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you are linking to a book called "The Natural History of Prognathous Species of Mankind." Which is what, exactly? Do you realize that your link is giving this book more traffic and credence than it has ever gotten? Why WOULD you read this?

No, the actual title of the book is "The Dred Scott Case".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, actually, the Constitution does not say "all men are created equal." I can see you didn't pay attention in history class or civics. The Consitution does say blacks are 3/5 of a human being.

No, the Constitution doesn't say this. (Speaking of paying attention in history class or civics.)

Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution says, "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this
Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."

In other words (I am not a lawyer): The number of representatives a state has will be based on state's population, which we will calculate as the number of free people (including indentured servants, but excluding Indians who don't have to pay taxes) plus three-fifths of the number of slaves.

I see you've been reading your Glenn Beck. U. of Pennsylvania professor, Rick Beeman, comments:

My goodness -- Glenn Beck got it completely wrong. They put [the three-fifths clause] there because delegates from the Southern states would never have agreed to the Constitution unless some weight was given to their slave populations in the apportionment of representation. They wanted slaves counted 100%, but when they saw that they could not get that, they settled for 3/5. The practical effect of that, far from making easier to abolish slavery, made it more difficult. It gave added weight to southern political power in Congress, it inflated Southern power in the apportioning of electoral votes, which led to a succession of Southern presidents. Ironically, the best thing that could have been done with respect to making it easier to abolish slavery would have been to have given slaves NO weight in the apportioning of representation.

Beck's comments are so depressingly typical of those who cite the Constitution to defend their views without having any understanding of the Constitution's history [emphasis added].

Good grief, no, I haven't been reading my Glenn Beck. I am specifically attacking the Constitution for saying that only white, male property-owners count. Is that what Glenn Beck does?

Who wanted the entire slave population to count, for determining how many representatives a state would get? The slave-owners. So yay, slave-owners? No.

When I say, "The Constitution does not say that a slave is 3/5 of a person," it's not because I'm defending the hypocrisy of the founding fathers in saying that all men are created equal (but only if those men are white, property-owning men). It's because the Constitution doesn't say that.

It may not explicitly say that sentence, but yes, the Constitution does say that slaves shall count as only 3/5 a person, which as the other PP pointed, was a compromise so that the Southern states didn't have even more power that they shouldn't have had t all since slaves weren't allowed a voice at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It may not explicitly say that sentence, but yes, the Constitution does say that slaves shall count as only 3/5 a person, which as the other PP pointed, was a compromise so that the Southern states didn't have even more power that they shouldn't have had t all since slaves weren't allowed a voice at all.

No, the Constitution does not say that slaves count as only 3/5 of a person. The Constitution says that only 3/5 of the slave population counts. It's not a big difference, and especially it's not a big difference given that even the slave-owning framers of the Constitution pretty much acknowledged that slavery was morally indefensible but they were going to go ahead and keep doing it anyway. But it is a difference.