"Three-fifths of a man".(democratization)

ITEM: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's remarks at the Community of Democracies Opening Plenary in Santiago, Chile, were posted by the State Department and carried worldwide. In discussing the "democratization" process Rice said: "For nearly a century after the founding of the United States, millions of black Americans like me were still condemned to the status below that of full citizenship. When the founding fathers of America said, 'We, the people,' they did not mean me. Many of my ancestors were thought to be only three-fifths of a man."

CORRECTION: Secretary Rice is repeating a myth about the derivation of the "three-fifths" phrase that became part of the Constitution. She has used this rhetorical canard before, as have many others. The allusion is often employed to slight the Founding Fathers for their alleged defense of slave interests.

In truth, the "three-fifths" provision was proposed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It became part of a compromise that bridged the differences between the "Virginia Plan" that reflected the interests of the large states (Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania), which sought representation in two houses proportional to population, and the "New Jersey Plan" that called for a unicameral body with equal representation for each state, which smaller states favored.

In the course of deliberations, numerous Northerners argued that slaves should not be counted at all to determine a state's representation in Congress; many Southerners took the opposite view to increase their representatives. The compromise reached was to count only three-fifths of the number of slaves (referred to euphemistically as "other Persons") for representation and taxation. (Free persons and indentured servants were included in the totals; excluded were "Indians not taxed.")

In Vindicating the Founders, Thomas West writes that this "clause is often singled out today as a sign of black dehumanization: they are only three-fifths human. But the provision applied to slaves, not blacks. That meant that free ...