The three-fifths compromise was offered and passed with near-total silence from delegates

Evidence

Wilson offered an alternative: “representation in proportion to the whole number of white & other free Citizens & inhabitants … and three-fifths of all other persons not comprehended in the foregoing description, except Indians not paying taxes.” The only delegate who pounced on the three-fifths “compromise” was Massachusetts abolitionist and future vice president Elbridge Gerry. “Blacks are property, and are used [in the South] … as horses and cattle are [in the North],” Gerry stammered out. So “why should their representation be increased to the southward on account of the number of slaves, [rather] than [on the basis of] horses or oxen to the north?” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 305

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: the three-fifths clause as the original example of a sacrosanct ‘compromise’ reached not by genuine bargaining but by a policy-backed motion nobody dared question aloud.