Three-Fifths Clause — Bunk History

Not “Three-Fifths of a Person”

What the three-fifths clause meant at ratification.

by Nathaniel C. Green via Commonplace on September 10, 2024

Slavery, Democracy, and the Racialized Roots of the Electoral College

The Electoral College was created to help white Southerners maintain their disproportionate influence in national governance.

by Christopher F. Petrella via Black Perspectives on November 14, 2016

What Did the Three-Fifths Compromise Actually Do?

It was motivated in part by white Southerners' concerns about taxes, but ended up being all about maintaining their political power.

by Alex Sayf Cummings via Tropics of Meta on April 17, 2015

Gen. Robt. E. Lee, 1886.

After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee Couldn't Run for President, but Trump Can?

Despite Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, a Colorado state judge stretches the word “officer,” permitting him to remain on the state’s ballot.

by Garrett Epps via Washington Monthly on November 20, 2023

Painting of the drafters if the U.S. Constitution

A Colorblind Compromise?

“Colorblindness,” an ideology that denies race as an organizing principle of the nation’s structural order, reaches back to the drafting of the US Constitution.

by Matthew Wills, Kasey Henricks via JSTOR Daily on September 9, 2022

Artistic collage of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

Was Emancipation Constitutional?

Did the Confederacy have a constitutional right to secede? And did Lincoln violate the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves?

by James Oakes via New York Review of Books on April 20, 2022

Picture of the "Words That Made Us."

Context and Consequences

On Akhil Reed Amar’s “The Words That Made Us,” a new history of America’s constitutional conversation.

by Joel Seligman via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 3, 2021

The Flawed Genius of the Constitution

The document counted my great-great-grandfather as 3/5 of a free person. But the Framers don’t own the version we live by today. We do.

by Danielle Allen via The Atlantic on September 17, 2020

The Anti-Slavery Constitution

From the Framers on, Americans have understood our fundamental law to oppose ownership of persons.

by Timothy Sandefur via National Review on September 12, 2019

Voter Suppression Carries Slavery's Three-Fifths Clause into the Present

The Georgia governor’s election was the latest example of how James Madison’s words continue to shape our views on race.

by Imani Perry via The Guardian on January 31, 2019

The Struggle Over the Meaning of the 14th Amendment Continues

The fight over the 150-year old language in the Constitution is a battle for the very heart of the American republic.

by Garrett Epps via The Atlantic on July 10, 2018

Wealth, Slavery, and the History of American Taxation

The nation's first "colorblind" tax set the stage for over two centuries of systematic consolidation of white racial interests.

by Christopher F. Petrella via Black Perspectives on April 20, 2017

Attendees look at a map of the U.S. electoral college during the Republican National Convention (RNC) near the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

The Debate That Gave Us the Electoral College

John Dickinson's contributions to the Constitution continue to reverberate today.

by Jane E. Calvert via Made By History on October 18, 2024

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in July in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

What’s the Matter With the Democrats?

Two new books reveal the shortcomings at the heart of the liberal critique of Trump voters.

by Sean T. Byrnes via Dissent on September 23, 2024

The Electoral College and Slavery

It's easy to get this one wrong.

by William Hogeland via Hogeland's Bad History on May 24, 2024

Boiling House at the Sugar Plantation Asunción, Cuba, 1857.

Slavery Was Crucial for the Development of Capitalism

Historian Robin Blackburn has completed a trilogy of books that provide a comprehensive Marxist account of slavery in the New World.

by Robin Blackburn, Owen Dowling via Jacobin on April 10, 2024

Abraham Lincoln campaigning with the Wide Awakes.

The Club of Cape-Wearing Activists Who Helped Elect Lincoln—and Spark the Civil War

The untold story of the Wide Awakes, the young Americans who took up the torch for their antislavery cause and stirred the nation.

by Jon Grinspan via Smithsonian on April 1, 2024

Two women working for the 1940 census.

'Are You Still Living?'

Who is counted by the census, how, and for what purpose, has changed a lot since 1790.

by Kasia Boddy via London Review of Books on October 19, 2023

The leaders of the Continental Congress: Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Morris.

The Disabled Founding Father who Put the ‘United’ in ‘United States’

Newly digitized journals reveal the life of Gouverneur Morris, the Constitution preamble writer, vocal opponent of slavery and disabled congressman.

by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on July 30, 2023

Abraham Lincoln.

The Two Constitutions

James Oakes’s deeply researched book argues that two very different readings of the 1787 charter put the United States on a course of all but inevitable conflict.

by David W. Blight via New York Review of Books on May 18, 2023

Illustration of Ken Burns

The Unbearable Whiteness of Ken Burns

The filmmaker’s new documentary on Benjamin Franklin tells an old and misleading story.

by Timothy Messer-Kruse via The Chronicle of Higher Education on April 20, 2022

Cleveland-Stevenson Tariff Reform Portrait Handkerchief

Tax Regimes

Historian Robin Einhorn reflects on Americans’ complicated relationship to taxes, from the colonial period through the Civil War to the tax revolts of the 1980s.

by Robin Einhorn, Noam Maggor via Phenomenal World on March 24, 2022

Machine in a wooden box with 40 dials: an electromechanical machine used in the 1890 U.S. census.

How the US Census Kick-Started America’s Computing Industry

As the country grew, each census required greater effort than the last. That problem led to the invention of the punched card – and the birth of an industry.

by David Lindsay Roberts via The Conversation on December 1, 2021

Rioters during the January 6th capitol siege

White Supremacists Declare War on Democracy and Walk Away Unscathed

The United States has a terrible habit of letting white supremacy get away with repeated attempts to murder American democracy.

by Carol Anderson via The Guardian on November 10, 2021

West Virginia's Founding Politicians Understood Democracy Better than Today's

They believed that wealth should have no bearing on a citizen’s voting power.

by Daniel W. Sunshine via HNN on October 17, 2021

People signing the declaration of independence

Our 250-Year Fight for Multiracial Democracy

We say we’re for it. We’ve never truly had it. These next few years will determine its fate.

by Matt Ford via The New Republic on May 17, 2021

Wallpaper printed in support of the Constitutional Union Party’s presidential candidate, John Bell, in 1860.

A Constitution of Freedom

During the 1860 presidential election, political parties dueled over the intent of the framers.

by James Oakes via Lapham’s Quarterly on January 20, 2021

Man waves Trump flag in front of the Supreme Court

When States Try to Bend Other States to Their Will, it Threatens the American Union

States have a legitimate way to influence national politics. Forcing their will on other states isn't it.

by Grace Mallon via Made By History on December 14, 2020

Standing on the Crater of a Volcano

In 1920, James Weldon Johnson went to Washington, armed with census data, to fight rampant voter suppression across the American South.

by Dan Bouk via Census Stories, USA on July 27, 2020

Illustration of Founders signing the Declaration of Independence.

How the Meaning of the Declaration of Independence Changed Over Time

When Thomas Jefferson penned ‘all men are created equal,’ he did not mean individual equality, says Stanford scholar.

by Jack Rakove, Melissa De Witte via Stanford University on July 1, 2020

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