Defiant Oath Keepers founder:18yrs in prison for seditious conspiracy

[Dill]

(05-26-2023, 02:44 PM)GMDino Wrote: Lot of words to say the founding fathers were fine with slaves being 3/5 of a person.  Or, as you would prefer, two out of every five didn't count as a person at all.

My apologies for over simplifying on a message board...lol.

How many free blacks were there in 1776?

So congrats on finding the exception to the rule. It only accounted for 95% of Blacks in the US at that time.

Same link: https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/legal/docs2.html

Nice to see people delving more deeply into U.S. history and reading the Constitution closely, 

though I'm not sure what sort of ship has been righted by a reminder that the 3/5s rule did not apply to "free" blacks.

ALL of the FF weren't ok with slavery. Hence the 3/5s compromise. That was one of the bitterest fights of the Constitutional Convention.

As Frederick Douglas reminded Americans in his 1860 essay on "The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-slavery?"--that's why words like "slave" or "slave insurrection" or "fugitive slave" don't appear in the Constitution. E.g., Article I sec. 9 refers to the "importation" of "persons" instead of the slave trade. Many or even most of the FF were embarrassed by slavery.

But a number also WEREN'T embarrassed and were always ready to secede or fight for that "right." That's why compromise was necessary, to keep the Union together. I would have accepted that compromise too--as a temporary measure; the Union held forth the best chance of eventually doing away with slavery (or so I imagine myself reasoning at the time.). 

That fundamental desire for and defense of inequality didn't end with the Civil War.  It sought new legal forms in segregation over the next century, and has continued since the Civil Rights Act in more residual forms, including Voter ID laws that "don't mention 'race.'" 

That residue is why, through most of my lifetime, the historical and legal interest in the 3/5s compromise has continued--not because failure to recognize its application only to unfree Blacks would be somehow grossly "unfair" to "free" blacks, who still could not vote in most states* and or otherwise enjoy equal rights.** 

It's a debate which, from the founding, has been part of U.S. "culture wars" between liberals and conservatives, if we understand those terms refer to positions on a political spectrum whose ground has shifted progressively***--not least by war and civil unrest--toward the liberal end. The current ground of primary debate seems to be over whether inequality still exists in institutional form (and even if it does, should anything be done about it), and that leads to debates over the history of law in the U.S., how it has historically been framed and reworked. That creates different emphases for interpretation, and interpretation for different goals. 


A good question for this thread might be the degree to which Rhodes and his "Oathkeepers" are a product of these differing emphases on what the Constitution meant for the Founders and what it should mean now. Oddly his organization is supposed to prevent a takeover of the government by an authoritarian leader, etc. . . . 

*Free Blacks could vote in NY if they met property requirements which did not apply to whites. They could vote in NJ until 1807 and in PA until 1838, when the right was rescinded, apparently as part of a scheme to send Black citizens "back where they came from."   https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/democracy-in-america/black-philadelphians-defend-their-voting-rights-1838/

**In all colonies at one point, free blacks could buy and own slaves, though. They had THAT right at least (exercised in most cases to free or protect family members). However in the North, they gave up this "right" as slavery was gradually outlawed by the beginning of the 19th century. Guess you could say "both sides" did it so "stop just blaming whites." lol  

***That's why MLK, whom "60s conservatives so vehemently opposed, is now often held up as a "conservative" by contemporary rightists, who still haven't actually read him.