The Three Fifths Compromise

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The Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're going to talk a little bit about the Three -Fifths

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Compromise today. It's gotten a little bit of attention, now it's I guess a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago.

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There's been some debates in various states about the teaching of critical race theory and in Tennessee, one of the representatives,

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Jim Lafferty, made a speech that was trending on Twitter and then it got into the mainstream news.

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He was criticized for this. He's a Republican for basically saying that the

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Three -Fifths Compromise was a strategy by which to end slavery. And so, because that was the strategy was to try to somehow reduce the number of slaves.

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And you'll hear this from other conservatives too and I'll just kind of give you the spiel. Maybe it's older than I realize, but I've only heard this maybe in the last few years that the

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Three -Fifths Compromise was an effort by people in the North, representatives in the North, to diminish the representation in the

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South. And if they could do that, then it opened the door for them to be able to end slavery eventually.

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And so, there's this kind of, it's kind of the way that they view the founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the

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Constitution really is that these are documents that their purpose was to somehow overturn the views of those who actually were the authors of them, that they were going to become kind of like these egalitarian engines for social change.

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And then Lincoln was the first one to really pick up that baton and enact what the founders really wanted.

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And as we go through history, we just keep getting better and better. Women get the right to vote and I don't know, you could probably put so many issues into this category and child labor laws, education, federal funded compulsory education.

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Maybe you could even put some of the LGBTQ stuff in. I don't really know to what extent you could use this, but that's it.

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The version I hear most often is that the Constitution, the Declaration, the

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Declaration especially are these sort of egalitarian manifestos that weren't realized when the founding fathers were around, but they put the ball in motion to realize some of these things.

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And that's kind of how modern day Republican strategists and conservative academics, quote unquote conservative, neoconservative,

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I don't know what word you want to use. They try to kind of argue the founding fathers from being on the ropes to being heroes of the revolution, et cetera.

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So, Justin Lafferty, I think exhibits some of this a little bit in his speech and I want to talk about it because the left, the hard left gets this wrong, but now we're seeing a response from Republican strategists that just, we're falling into a trap if we as conservatives buy this line, because it's just not true.

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The Three -Fifths Compromise was legitimately a compromise between two regions of the country for purposes of representation.

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And there really weren't a whole lot of high and noble moral disputes going on.

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I mean, yeah, there's more morality play into it, sure, but the morality was more focused on representation, not whether or not we can end slavery in the future.

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And I'll show you some quotes that maybe you could maybe try to read into, but really our main source on all of this is

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James Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention. So I've pulled out some of the quotes from his notes and it's free online. It's easy to find this stuff.

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Not hard. Spend an hour one afternoon just looking up, okay, Three -Fifths Compromise, look it up in Madison's notes and you'll find some things that are interesting.

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But I did some of that for you, so I'll present what I have here. Let's go through what happened first though. This particular individual,

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Justin Lafferty, small business owner, I guess, Methodist, went to Farragut High School.

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I don't know why I'm telling you all this, it's just I put it up there for his phone numbers. All his stuff is there on the

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Tennessee General Assembly webpage and his district, which is right outside of Knoxville, actually.

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So maybe it even encapsulates, I'm not sure, parts of Knoxville, but it's kind of to the west of Knoxville.

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And so he's in the south, obviously, and they're debating critical race theory. And this is how the

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New York Times portrayed him and one of the things he said, they said, in the Tennessee legislature on Tuesday, a state lawmaker defended the

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Three -Fifths Compromise arguing that it had helped clear the way to ending slavery. Remarks that were rebuked by critics, including black colleagues, as insulting and demeaning.

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Now insulting, demeaning, probably just kind of ignorant is what these are. And it's the result of the narrative.

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Like I said, there's a narrative out there that is just not good. Let me just briefly say what

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I would, in response to the narrative, what I'd say. You say, look, the Founding Fathers had views on civilization, culture, race, whatever you want to put into that blank.

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They had views on certain things that we don't have today. In fact, they were probably more open to arranged marriages and,

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I mean, they just freshly came from a region that believed in the divine right of kings.

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That wasn't off the table. Some wanted, before the convention, Washington to be a king.

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I mean, they had archaic views. And yet we are indebted to them for the stand and the sacrifice that they made.

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We stand on their shoulders. There's many true and beautiful and good things about them we want to emulate today.

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The character that many of them had, we want to have that character in the children growing up today.

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And that's the way to defend the Founding Fathers. And look at the great things that they produced in their documents.

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And you can talk about those. If you try to say, if you make the measure of all things, whether or not someone believes in racial equality, right, which is what the left now wants to do in a way, of course, they're kind of inconsistent on it because they'll make, you know, things that don't fit their agenda.

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They'll kind of leave out like how trade unions were very racist by their own definitions.

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You know, they'll leave out some of their Democratic Party, like Lyndon Johnson, heroes who said some very offensive things.

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They'll leave that out. We don't talk about that. So they're inconsistent. But in theory, let's say they're principled.

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They want to make the standard whether or not someone believes in racial equality. If they don't, off to the chopping block.

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Their legacy doesn't matter. We take down their statues. We destroy their, we can't be influenced by their works, et cetera.

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Now, of course, if you go by this logic, we got to get rid of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and many other things.

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So conservatives rightly don't want to get rid of those things. That's the stability of our society.

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Also, there's a lot of really great ideas in those things, such as, you know, the separation of powers, federalism, the three co -equal branches, et cetera.

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So what happens is conservatives, unfortunately, and I hesitate to even use the word conservative.

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I don't know what to call them, but the neoconservatives today, they will buy into that. They'll say, yeah, of course, you know, racial equality is so important that if someone does not adhere to that, to the version that we have, which is updated every five seconds, someone doesn't adhere to it, then yeah, they should be canceled.

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But here's the thing, they'll say, because the founders made these great documents, which eventually led to the overturning of slavery, segregation, et cetera, then they're the good guys in this story.

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Even though they didn't personally hold those beliefs, they allowed for a system, or they kind of like, almost like covertly put into motion the overturning of their own beliefs.

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I just think that's, you're just setting yourself up for failure when you do that. The left can come by and say, okay, well, you agree with our standard.

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These people don't meet the standard. I don't see what the problem is. Just cancel them. Why don't we just come up with a new constitution?

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I mean, we don't really, do we want these evil slaveholders and people at the very least who didn't believe in racial equality, civilizational equality, to be the ones that are governing us even today through their document?

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I mean, you're setting yourself up. That's my only point. Focus on the things that are true and valuable about them, the things that we actually have honored them for, and I think you'll be fine.

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But that's, we've made a bad deal. And I think, unfortunately,

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I think a very well -meaning person, Justin Lafferty, he seems well -meaning. I think he wants to do the right thing. His heart is, he wants to defend his country, but the means he's using to defend it will actually propel its downfall even further and more than I think he realizes.

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And that's, and I think it's probably just ignorance, and that's okay. Maybe he heard a talk by,

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I'm thinking of names, but I know if I mention a name, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna have to do a whole episode on them, and people in the notes are gonna wonder why

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I mentioned this particular name, because they're popular. But maybe he listened to some conservative talk show host or quote -unquote historian who promotes the narrative

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I just explained, and that's where he got it. I don't know. But here is what he had to say.

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I'm gonna play it for you. The Three -Fifths Compromise was a direct effort to ensure that Southern states never got the population necessary to continue the practice of slavery everywhere else in the country.

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What does that mean? Appropriation based on population. That's how we pick. Everybody in here knows.

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We've got nine, I hope I'm right, nine state representatives. By limiting the number of population in the count, they specifically limited the number of representatives that would be available in the slave -holding states, and they did it for the purpose of ending slavery well before Abraham Lincoln, well before a

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Civil War. Do we talk about that? I don't hear that anywhere in this conversation across the country.

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I don't know how we've gotten here. I don't know what we do about it. But talking about changing our history, changing's not the right word, talking about incorporating another view of history while ignoring the very writings that we have access to is no way to go about it.

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And I will say, I'm getting hungry watching this as he's got, next to him, his

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Chick -fil -A bags just open there. I don't know if they just had lunch or they're having lunch, but anyway, distraction.

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So the reason he doesn't hear people talking about that is because it's not true, unfortunately, what he said. And the thing is,

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I admire the guy in a way. I think he's trying to stem the tide. He wants to, you know, he knows our history's being changed.

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He's right about that. His instincts are correct. He knows they're gunning for the founding fathers. He wants to defend that.

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But at the same time, putting motivations into the minds of the founding fathers that weren't there doesn't help because then the leftist can come back and say, okay, you've bought into our standard and now we're going to show you that you're wrong.

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You know, there is nothing in the Madison's notes or, you know, outward indications that the founding fathers thought of the three -fifths compromise as a way to end slavery.

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So that's what he's setting himself up for here. And I see this done all the time by conservatives, unfortunately, and it's just not a good strategy.

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Here's what happened on CNN. A Tennessee Republican state representative is facing backlash after defending what is widely viewed as one of the most infamous deals in US history, the three -fifths compromise, wherein slaves were explicitly counted as three -fifths of a free person or three -fifths of a man.

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So that the slave states would be able to accrue more political power without having to count a slave as a full person, infamous, racist.

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Take a look now. This is state representative Justin Lafferty. This is what he had to say about it.

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We ended up biting a bitter, bitter pill that haunts us today.

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And we did it to lay the foundation for all this that we enjoy in this country. For as much as we scream and fight and argue, there is no place in this world that I'd rather live and call home.

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The three -fifths compromise was a direct effort to ensure that southern states never got the population necessary to continue the practice of slavery everywhere else in the country.

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By limiting the number of population in the count, they specifically limited the number of representatives that would be available in the slave -holding states, and they did it for the purpose of ending slavery well before Abraham Lincoln, well before a civil war.

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Do we talk about that? I don't hear that anywhere in this conversation across the country. I don't say anything on this floor today with any malice toward any of my friends on the other side.

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I say this only because I'm tired, y 'all. The people of this nation are tired. If you start looking for trouble, if that's all you're bent on,

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I guarantee you, you're gonna find it. Okay, that is what we're dealing with right now.

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The lawmaker making those statements during a debate over legislation in Tennessee that would limit what schools can teach students about racism and privilege.

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Our team reached out to him for a statement, but has not heard back. So let's get the facts now. Peniel Joseph is here, a professor of history at the

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University of Texas. I'm sure we need hours to talk about this, Peniel. Good evening to you. It's important to know your history here.

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Can you refresh everyone on the facts of the Three -Fifths Compromise, please? Yeah, Don, the compromise is really the fact that Southern colonies actually wanted to count enslaved

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African Americans as one person each for issues of representation.

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And the compromise was that they would be counted as three -fifths of a person.

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And what that did is actually give Southern slave -holding states more proportional representation than their actual citizens who could vote.

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At the time, obviously, women couldn't vote, but men could. So when we think about the

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Three -Fifths Clause, the Three -Fifths Clause is a compromise to create the

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United States of America and have the Constitution ratified in 1787. All right,

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I'm gonna stop it there. He's right. The professor he had on is right. Now, the professor goes off into a little bit of a leftist,

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I don't remember exactly what it was when I watched it, but he gets more into opinion.

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But what he's talking about right now is fact. That is the Three -Fifths Compromise. So he corrects

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Don Lemon, but he also corrects, in a way, Justin Lafferty. Both of them are off on this point. One wants to say that this was the

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Founding Fathers' way of trying to end slavery. That was the Three -Fifths Compromise. Don Lemon starts out with the assumption that Justin Lafferty's just, he's in crazy town because clearly this was a racist thing to make them out to be three -fifths of a person, like they don't count to be a whole person.

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And that's just not true either. It wasn't about their worth, it was about representation. So this professor is actually right.

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Now I want to read for you some notes from James Madison, and some of his notes are a little difficult just because he used some shorthand abbreviations and so forth.

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But let's go through some of the things that were said by different representatives during the Constitutional Convention about this issue.

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Now the first one I want to include is just from July 2nd. This is not specifically related to the

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Three -Fifths Compromise. This is just what was a debate throughout the entire Constitutional Convention, large states versus small states.

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At the time, Kander obliged him to admit that the large states would feel a partiality for their own citizens and give them a preference in appointments, that they might also find some common points in their commercial interests.

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Whenever you hear commercial, by the way, think commercialism, we don't use that word a lot today, but we're talking about maybe the sort of what preceded the

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American system, and then maybe the word capitalism could be put in there, or state capitalism today, crony capitalism.

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Oftentimes, commercial interests, when they talk about that, it's people who are involved in commerce who want basically benefits from the government.

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They want the government to favor their particular industry. Anyways, I'll keep going. And promote treaties favorable to them, meaning the larger states.

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There is a real distinction between the northern and southern interests. North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia in their rice and indigo had a peculiar interest which might be sacrificed.

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This is Madison on Pickney from South Carolina. Pickney was making this argument, just saying, look, there's differences between us, between large states, between small states, between the economic interests of the south and the north.

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Different industries, different things they're selling, manufactured goods versus agriculture.

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These are the kinds of things that the constitutional convention was striving, they were striving to create compromises over.

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Now here, let's get into the Three -Fifths Compromise, July 9th. This is

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July 9th, 1787, and this is what Madison wrote.

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My learned colleague, Mr. Wilson, has already mentioned that the present method of voting by states was submitted to originally by Congress under a conviction of its impropriety, inequality, and injustice.

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This appears in the words of their resolution. It is of September 6th, 1774.

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The words are resolved that in determining questions in this, each colony or province shall have only one vote, the

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Congress not being possessed of or at present able to procure materials for ascertaining the importance of each colony.

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On the question of agreeing to Mr. King's and Mr. Wilson's motion, it passed in the affirmative. So in other words, the people, what

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I just read to you, the idea that in determining questions of representation, each colony or province shall have one vote.

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You had a number of states vote for this. Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey were no though, they voted against it.

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Pennsylvania voted for it. Delaware voted no. Maryland, I'm not sure that's a no or yes,

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Virginia voted for it, North Carolina. The point is here, you have different states voting different ways and they have to try to figure out a way to get all these states to agree on something.

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It was then moved by Mr. Rutledge, seconded by Mr. Butler to add the words equitable ratio of representation at the end of the motion just agreed to the words according to the quotas of contribution.

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That means according to taxes, means we're going to represent according to how we're taxed. If you're taxed, if someone is being taxed, then they should be represented.

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That's the principle, the underlying principle here. On the motion of Mr. Wilson of Pennsylvania, seconded by Mr.

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Pickney of South Carolina, this was postponed in order to add after the words equitable ratio of representation, the words following, in proportion to the whole number of white and other free citizens and inhabitants of every equitable,

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I'm sorry, every age, sex and condition, including those bound to servitude for a term of years and three fifths of all other persons not comprehended in the foregoing description, except Indians not paying taxes in each state.

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This being the rule in the act of Congress agreed to by 11 states for a portion in quotas of revenue in the states and requiring a census only every five, seven, or I think it's 10 years.

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So here's the thing. Let me break this down a little. You have a representative, Mr. Wilson from Pennsylvania, you've represented

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Mr. Pickney from South Carolina, basically saying, okay, let's postpone this thing. We need to add some language to this because here's the thing.

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If the principle we're operating on is if you're taxed, you should be represented. That means that every person of every age and sex now could every one of every age and sex vote.

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No, they could not, they couldn't. So it made, so, so it's not that slaves were unique in this.

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They couldn't vote either, but you're also representing and taxing people of different ages, different sex, you're taxing slaves.

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They get taxed as well. So because of that, they're saying that they should be represented on the state level or in the, in the federal government.

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The equitable ratio of representation is, is in portion to proportion to the whole number of white and other free citizens.

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So this would, I'm assuming here apply, not just because of white and other free citizens.

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There are a number of slaveholders that were not white.

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They were black. There were, they, they did exist. And I've gone through that in another podcast on why slavery was wrong.

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I talked about that a bit. I went through it in my reparations podcast as well. And the inhabitants of every age, sex, and condition.

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So they're all getting, they're, they're being represented for the purposes of taxation and representation as one person.

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But those who are in servitude, bound to servitude for a term of years, let's see, and they would also.

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But three -fifths of those who are basically slaves, all other persons not comprehended in the foregoing description.

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So slaves and Indians who don't pay taxes would not be, Indians who don't pay taxes wouldn't be included.

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That's the moral principle. If you pay tax, you get representation. Three -fifths was because this was proposed because they would have known about the

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North and how the North, many people, at least in the North, would not have wanted slaves to be represented.

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They would have felt that that was inflating the representation somehow. Now again, women cannot vote, children cannot vote, yet they are also taxed.

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So you got to put yourself in that frame, that frame of mind, or else you're not going to get this. This is not about human worth.

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This is about taxation and representation. Now here's another section I want to read.

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This is from July 9th. Mr. Patterson considered the proposed estimate for the future according to the combined rules of numbers and wealth as too vague.

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For this reason, New Jersey was, I can't read the shorthand,

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I'm not sure what he meant there, but I'm going to continue. He could regard Negroes, slaves, in no light but as property.

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They are no free agents, have no personal liberty, no faculty of acquiring property, but on the contrary are themselves property, and like other property, entirely at the will of the master.

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Has a man in Virginia a number of votes in proportion to the number of his slaves? And if Negroes are not represented in the states to which they belong, why should they be represented in the general government?

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What is the true principle of representation? Is it expedient by which an assembly of certain individuals chosen by the people is substituted in place of the inconvenient meeting of the people themselves?

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If such a meeting of the people was actually to take place, would the slaves vote? Why, they would not.

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Then why should they be represented? Now again, again, I remind you, women and children would not voted either.

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I continue. He was also against such an indirect encouragement of the slave trade.

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So here's where you might have Justin Lafferty having, it's not, he's wrong, but at least there's something he can try to put a hook in here.

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You have a representative, Mr. Patterson from New Jersey, I believe. He is, William Patterson is saying that certain, that one of the reasons here, and it's not his main reason, but one of the reasons is, look, this will encourage the slave trade if you allow them to be represented.

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So we shouldn't, they shouldn't be represented because that will encourage states to inflate their numbers of slaves because they'll get more representation that way.

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Again, it's not, is there morality playing into this? Well, a lot of people were against the slave trade, but they were not for racial equality.

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They still, they didn't want the same kinds of civil rights for black people in their states.

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I mean, a lot of, there were a lot of, this was common thought with many at the time. So is he on an egalitarian crusade here?

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No, but the slave trade was pretty, most people did not like it at the time. It was looked down on. If you were a slave trader, you were looked down on at the time, and that doesn't really matter where you were.

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It was, you know, without getting into a whole discussion about it, many considered it to be a necessary evil if they were pro -slave trade.

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There were some who thought it was good, but by this time, not, they would have not been as vocal.

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They would have been, there was a bit of a shame connected to the trade itself. I'm not talking about the institution of slavery, I'm talking about the trade.

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So this is what he's saying, like this could encourage the slave trade. Let's keep going here.

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In their act of relating to the charge, okay, talks about how the Articles of Confederation, they were ashamed to use the term slave.

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Mr. Madison, though, reminded Mr. Patterson that his doctrine of representation, which was in its principle the genuine one, must forever silence the pretensions of small states to an equality of votes with the large ones.

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They ought to vote in the same proportion in which their citizens would do. If the people of all the states were collectively met, he suggested as a proper guide for compromise that in the first branch, the states should be represented according to their number of free inhabitants, and in the second, which had for one of its primary objects, the guardianship of property according to the whole number, including slaves.

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Mr. Butler urged warmly the justice and necessity regarding wealth in the apportionment of representation. Mr. King had always expected that as the southern states are the richest, they would not league themselves with the north unless some respect were played to their superior wealth.

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If the latter expect those preferential distinctions in commerce and other advantages which they will derive from the connections, they must not expect to receive them without allowing some advantages in return.

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Eleven out of thirteen of the states had agreed to consider slaves in the apportionment of taxation, and taxation and representation ought to go together.

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Here you're finding the crux of the issue. It's taxation. It's representation. It's small states. It's large states.

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It's the commercial interests of one region versus the commercial interests of another region. If you want to talk about the morality of this, this was the morality.

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This was the debate. This was primarily what was being talked about. It wasn't this, hey, we're going to have the three -fifths compromise to end slavery.

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You're not finding that here. Neither are you finding, hey, they're just worth three -fifths of a person.

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You're not finding that either. It's for taxation. It's for representation. Here's some more.

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Mr. Jerry of Massachusetts thought property not the rule of representation. Why then should the blacks who are property in the

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South be in the rule of representation more than the cattle and horses of the North? He's saying basically, look, property should be the rule.

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That's what I think the principle should be. If it's property that we have, then you might as well represent the cattle and horses.

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This is someone from Massachusetts. This is supposedly a person who is trying to end slave trade and slavery in their modern neoconservative retelling.

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Here he is comparing slaves with cattle and horses. Is this going to fly?

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Is this really going to fit the narrative? Not really. The facts just don't fit either narrative we're hearing from both political sides.

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Just get back to history and stop the politics. Stop politicizing it. Stop playing identity politics with our ancestors.

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That's my goal. Mr. King from Massachusetts, being much opposed to fixing numbers as the rule of representation was particularly so on the account of the blacks.

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He thought the admission of them along with whites at all would excite great discontents among the states having no slaves.

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Again, someone from Massachusetts does not want the fixing numbers as the rule of representation for blacks.

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He doesn't want them represented. You shouldn't admit them to be represented like the whites. They're not the same.

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Then you have July 11th, same day. Mr. Wilson did not well see on what principle the admission of blacks in the proportion of three -fifths could be explained.

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Are they admitted as citizens? Then why are they not admitted on equality with white citizens? Are they admitted as property?

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Then why is not other property admitted into the computation? These were difficulties, however, which he thought must be overruled by the necessity of compromise.

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He had some apprehensions also from the tendency of the blending of the blacks with the whites to give disgust to the people of Pennsylvania, as had been intimated by his colleagues.

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So here you're finding, look, this doesn't fit the neoconservative interpretation of this at all.

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What he's saying is that he opposes the admission of blacks in proportion of three -fifths.

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There's no principle of these things because how do we classify them?

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You could have said women and children. They're not voting, but they can be classified, but he's saying, look, what are they actually?

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If you classify them, what he's trying to say is if you try to then say, okay, they're citizens or they're something other than property, then there's apprehensions because you're going to blend the blacks with the whites.

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You're opening the door for racial equality in a way here. And the people of Pennsylvania aren't going to like that.

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I mean, this just doesn't fly, guys. That's his reason for opposing, one of his reasons.

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And again, the main thing is taxation, the main thing is these interests, but you're finding things like this where it just does not fit.

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Here's another one. Mr. Gorham, Massachusetts, supported the propriety of establishing numbers as the rule.

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He said that in Massachusetts, estimates have been taken in the different towns and the persons have been curious enough to compare these estimates with their respective numbers of people.

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And it had been found, including even in Boston, that the most exact proportion prevail between numbers and property.

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He was aware that there might be some weight in what had fallen from his colleague as to the umbrage, which might be taken by the people of the

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Eastern states. Eastern means Northeastern. But he recollected that when the proposition of Congress for changing the eighth article of the

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Confederation was before the legislator of Massachusetts, the only difficulty then was to satisfy them that the Negroes ought not to have been counted equally with whites instead of being counted in ratio of three fifths only,

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July 11th, 1787. What he's saying is like, look, we did it in Massachusetts for the purpose of taxation, for the purpose of taxation.

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This is how we figured it out in Massachusetts. This isn't what's happening now. This compromise isn't much different than what's already happened.

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And it happened in Massachusetts. Here's another one. But as the compact was to be voluntary, it is in vain for the

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Eastern states to insist on what the South, Southern states will never agree to. It is equally vain for the latter to require what the other states can never admit.

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And he verily believed the people of Pennsylvania. So this is the crux of it.

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Governor Morris of New York. You have two sides here. One wants greater representation.

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One wants less representation because of economic interests more than anything else. And that was what the three fifths compromise was about.

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It wasn't this high and lofty moral statement, either to say black people or slaves, in this case, it's not even black people, it's slaves specifically.

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It's not saying that slaves are three fifths of a person. That never happened. On the other side, it's not saying that this is some grand strategy for getting rid of slavery.

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It wasn't. In fact, I mean, most of the first, most presidents through the first 80 years of the country's history were from Virginia.

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Most of the Supreme Court justices, I mean, Virginia dominated. And and that's a southern state.

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So it's they could not have conceived or thought. I mean, New England tried to secede in the

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Hartford Convention. They were toying with the idea. They weren't it wasn't they weren't saying, you know what, remember back to the

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Constitutional Convention when we we really fooled those southerners because we didn't let them count their slaves as one person so we could end slavery later.

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That never happened, guys. It didn't happen. It's a myth. Both sides are a myth and not a myth.

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In the way of, you know, in the good way of a myth that societies have for teaching character to children or something like that, in the mythos of society, no myth in the sense of it's just not true.

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There's there's literally no truth to it. And it's actually the creation of a new myth to try to paint the founders in a certain way.

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I just say stick to what the history actually says about these stick to the record we have and don't try to fit this three fifths compromise issue into your political agenda because that dog doesn't hunt.

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And I would say to someone like Justin Lafferty, what he's doing in a sense is buying into also a narrative that's not true, that is going to undermine the his local history, his local the pride they have in their state of Tennessee, because he's saying, oh, in the southern states now, of course,

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Tennessee came came a little later. But what he's saying is that, you know, the

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South were the villains, North were the heroes. America was it's the North, you know, that we're looking to. They're they're the founders.

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They're the and you're shortchanging the Southern contribution here when you do that. And you're you're doing it not based on truth, but based on a figment.

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And it just it's not you want to probably cultivate a local pride, a local history and local knowledge of that.

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And so if I were him, if I you know, not that I am. And he did this off the cuff. So, I mean, I have some respect for him in trying to stem the tide here.

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But a better way to do it would be just to say, look, critical race theory introduces this idea that racism motivates everything.

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In fact, when you start to make the three fifths compromise, this statement about human worth, you're doing that you're injecting this moral dimension that wasn't part of that compromise.

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When you start to say that the Constitution was motivated by ideas that stemmed from slavery because the men, many of the men who were part of it were slaveholders.

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What you're doing is you're you're making an inseparable relationship between the labor system these men were engaged in and the document they crafted.

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And that relationship does not need to be there. It's the ideas in the Constitution are good ideas.

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Whether these men had slaves or did not have slaves, it's irrelevant. And so we want to teach history accurately as best as we possibly can, knowing that there are interpretations that are going to come to bear.

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But we want an interpretation, a paradigm that's going to make sense of all the facts. We don't want paradigms that have to leave out

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Madison's notes or paradigms that, you know, ignore certain things in history to make a political agenda feasible.

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Critical race theory is postmodern. It gets into memory studies and uses standpoint epistemology to reinterpret the past in ways that leave out things that contradict the narrative.

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And it does so in a Marxist fashion. That's why we shouldn't do it. It's going to create further division. And that's that's what you can say.

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So I hope that was helpful for those who maybe didn't know a lot about the Three -Fifths Compromise. I'd encourage you, hey, don't believe me because I said it.

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Go do the homework. Go to Madison's notes. You can find them online in PDF format pretty easily and just type in three fifths.

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Start reading them and you'll find out what it was really about. So I hope that was helpful. God bless.