Inflating Southern Power and Widening the Sectional Divide. The most immediate impact of the Three Fifths Compromise was that it inflated the amount of power the Southern states had, largely by securing more seats for them in the House of Representantives.
General Kelly,
I appreciate your service to this country, both as an active duty member of the Armed Services and in your current role as Chief of Staff at The White House. However, your words and actions over the past few weeks have been irresponsible and misleading. Numerous authors have tackled the issues with your misogynistic slurs about Congresswoman Wilson, I’d like to bring your attention to your comments about The Civil War. You said, “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”
Since this Administration attempts to alter history and facts, I’d like to revisit history. Are you familiar with the Three-Fifth’s Compromise? It is one of the tenets of our Democracy that continues to affect us in 2017. That “Compromise” counted enslaved persons as three-fifths of a white person. This policy was adopted during the drafting of the Constitution in 1787. In short, America was establishing how to count population for the House of Representatives.
Slave states, like those that Robert E. Lee defended, wanted to count enslaved people to increase their presence in the House of Representatives. Free states only wanted to count free people. The number of legislators from each state has a direct correlation to the state’s population. The slave states were trying to “stack the deck” to promote their reprehensible agenda and to increase their likelihood of winning elections through the Electoral College. It is amazing that the south wanted to count enslaved people as voters, who weren’t allowed to vote, to pass legislation to keep them enslaved.
General Kelly, here’s the truth: Donald J. Trump is President because of the Three-Fifth’s Compromise. The Electoral College was established to give slave states an increased voice in government; which ultimately, gave the south an advantage in Presidential Elections. Historians often argue that the Electoral College is the only reason Thomas Jefferson was elected. Trump’s tendency to marginalize communities of color coupled with losing the Popular Vote by nearly three million votes in a changing electorate is troubling; 230 years after the Constitutional Convention of 1787, all votes are still not counted equally.I’m appalled at your audacity to use the phrase, “on both sides” after telling a bold lie. We know that Trump used that same phrase back in August, after the tragedy in Charlottesville, VA that left Heather Heyer dead. Your recent transgressions make me question your service in the military. How many innocent women did you erroneously berate? How many people were dishonorably discharged based on your flawed interpretation of events? How many times did you lie to make yourself look good? Even though we may disagree politically 90% of the time, I still expect you to be a man of integrity.
