We return to the State House the next morning, July 5th. My solemn promise to Franklin that I’ll hold my temper is still fresh in my heart. I feel very grateful towards him for saving me the night before. That gratitude makes me even more determined to keep my promise.
The Grand Committee recommends its compromise: proportional voting in the House, which would have one representative for every 40,000 citizens; one vote per state in the Senate; and the House having exclusive control over taxing and spending.
Despite everyone’s hope for quick approval, they wrangle for the next ten days: mostly over how many representatives each state will get in the House and how to ensure that each state’s share of representatives keeps current with shifts of population between states.
It is Virginia’s Governor, Edmond Randolph, who proposes that a census be taken periodically to count each state’s population. I’m familiar with the census because I’d sat with Pop as he filled out the required form back in 2010. But I never knew it was required by the Constitution—or that it helped slavery find its way into the Constitution.
Southern delegates insist slaves be fully counted to increase population numbers and increase southern votes in the House. Northern delegates don’t want slaves counted at all.
The debate itself really tests my resolve to keep my promise to Franklin.
“The labor of a South Carolina slave is just as productive and valuable as that of a Massachusetts freeman,” Pierce Butler proclaims. “Since wealth provides great defense and utility to the nation, slaves are as equally valuable to the nation as are freemen. Consequently, equal representation should be allowed for slaves in a government which is being instituted principally for the protection of property; and is itself supported by that property.”
Virginia’s George Mason disagrees.
“Even though this would benefit my state, it would be unjust,” he says. “Yes, slaves are valuable. They raise the value of land, increase exports and imports and thereby generate revenue for the government to feed and support an army. In cases of emergency, they can even become soldiers themselves. Since they are useful to the community, they shouldn’t be excluded when calculating representation. But I can’t regard them as equal to freemen; and could not vote for that calculation.”
Nor can Pennsylvania’s Gouverneur Morris.
“I don’t agree that blacks should be admitted into the census. The people of Pennsylvania would revolt at the idea of being put on a footing with slaves. They would reject any plan that would have such an effect.”
Referring to blacks as wealth? Calling them useful? Warning of revolt amongst whites if they were compared to blacks? What kind of world was I living in?
And I don’t know what to make of Gouverneur Morris. Later that afternoon, it seems like he’s on our side when he says: “If I am forced to the choice of doing injustice to the Southern states or to human nature, I must do it to the Southern states. I could never agree to encourage the slave trade by allowing the South representation for their Negroes.”
But then the next morning, he proposes that states and their citizens be taxed in the same proportion as their share of congressional representation. In other words, if a state has 20% of the population, it should have 20% of the seats in the House and pay 20% of the national taxes. It’s clever—I have to give Morris that—because it means that the more representatives a state has the more tax it will have to pay. If slaves are counted in the census, slave states will have more House seats, but also higher taxes.
Clever or not, it just about sends North Carolina’s William Davie into orbit.
“It is high time to speak out!” he thunders. “I can see that some gentlemen mean to deprive the Southern states of any representation for their blacks. North Carolina will never confederate on any terms that do not rate them at least as three-fifths. If the Eastern states mean to exclude them altogether, our business is at an end!”
Good! Walk on out! I want to shout.
Then Gouverneur Morris rises again.
“It’s been said that it’s high time to speak out, and I will do so candidly,” he says, his peg leg thumping as he paces. “I came here to form an agreement for the good of America. I’m ready to do so with all the states. I hope and believe that all will enter into that agreement. But if they will not, I am ready to join with any states that will. It is useless for the Eastern states to insist on what the Southern states will never agree to. It is equally useless for the Southern states to require that which the other states will not agree to. The people of Pennsylvania will never agree to the inclusion of Negroes.”
A tense silence takes over that hot, muggy room where delegates have cast off wigs, removed coats, unbuttoned collars, and wave fans under sweaty chins.
But then, delegates from Connecticut, Virginia, and Pennsylvania suggest a new compromise: that all white inhabitants and three-fifths of black inhabitants be counted when calculating each state’s share of representation in the House and of the nation’s taxes.
The “three-fifths of black inhabitants” was the compromise between the South’s demand to count blacks fully and the North’s refusal to count black’s at all. A census would take place within six years of the first meeting of the new Congress and every ten years after that.
That motion passes: six states in favor, two against, and two divided.
Now that they’ve settled how to determine each state’s representation in the House, it’s time to vote on the Grand Committee’s entire compromise. Including all the changes made since July 5th, that compromise proposes:
1. that Congress consist of the House of Representatives and the Senate;
2. that the House initially consist of sixty-five seats parceled out amongst the states according to estimated percentages of population;
3. that a census be taken within six years of Congress’s first meeting, and every ten years after that, to determine the population of each state, counting all whites and three-fifths of blacks, and that both taxes and House seats be reapportioned according to each census;
4. that all taxing and government spending bills originate in the House; and that the Senate have no power to change them; and
5. that every state have an equal vote in the Senate.
First thing Monday morning, July 16th, before anyone can raise another objection or suggest another change, the delegates vote. By the slimmest of margins—one vote—they agree to accept the “Connecticut Compromise.”