In Pre-production Discussion
We grew up believing that America was a true representative democracy. That was a lie. The Three-Fifth’s Compromise is one of the tenets of our Democracy that continues to affect us in 2019 and beyond. That “Compromise” counted enslaved persons as three-fifths of a white person. This policy was adopted during the drafting of the Constitution in 1787. In short, America was establishing how to count population for the House of Representatives.
Slave states wanted to count enslaved people to increase their presence in the House of Representatives. Free states only wanted to count free people. The number of legislators from each state has a direct correlation to the state’s population. The slave states were trying to “stack the deck” to promote their reprehensible agenda and to increase their likelihood of winning elections through the Electoral College. It is amazing that the south wanted to count enslaved people as voters, who weren’t allowed to vote, to pass legislation to keep them enslaved.