The Three-fifths Clause gave Southern whites the political power to secure Native land.

Evidence

The historian Mary Hershberger has observed that slavery played a role in the successful passage of the Indian Removal Act, since the Three-fifths Clause of the U.S. Constitution (which apportioned additional representation in Congress for numbers of enslaved people owned) increased the voting power of Southern white residents who sought Native land. … As the historians David and Jeanne Heidler have put it in their book Indian Removal, the institution of American slavery and the event of Indian Removal were, in both cause and effect, “twin evils.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 502

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Southern white families’ land claims were founded on Native American removal — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 23