Talk:United States Electoral College/Archive 11

Remove Foner citation
Without objection, I will remove the Eric Foner quote at the end of the “Eclipsing slavery” section.

It suggests that the historical impact of the Three-Fifths clause was to “greatly enhance the number of southern votes in the. . . Electoral College”. It then implies that the enhanced power directly resulted in a determinative outcome producing three-fourths of the presidents over fifty years, such that. . . “twelve out of sixteen presidential elections between 1788 and 1848 resulted in the election of a Southern slaveowner.”

Although Eric Foner is a personal favorite among the scholars I frequently source in Wikipedia history articles on slavery, the South, and Virginia, the Foner analysis as represented in this instance of copy-edit does not hold up to scrutiny:


 * 1) In those sixteen elections held over that fifty-year period, the slave state proportion of the Electoral College changed from a Constitutional mandated 36.2% for the first election, to 40-44% for thirteen elections, with a another high of 53% in 1808 and another low of 36% for 1836.


 * Essentially the “slave holding” states were in a permanent minority in the Electoral College, even before the one-section-only 1860 presidential majority, election, following the unanswered addition of four free-soil states in a row. — There is no evidence of “greatly enhanced’ numbers.


 * 2) For a third of the sixteen elections (5 of 16), BOTH the free-soil and slave-holding states were unanimously agreed as to presidential selection. Washington for 1788 and 1792, Monroe for 1820, both national parties chose northerners in 1840, and both chose southerners in 1844.


 * 3) In an additional fourth of the elections (4 of 16), the slave-holding states voted as a block together — HOWEVER — a) in 1804, when they voted for the re-election of Thomas Jefferson, he won 72.8% of the popular vote,and a majority of free-soil states, b) in 1808, at the first election of James Madison, he won with 64.7% of the popular vote and a majority of the free-soil states, c) in 1816, when they went for James Madison, he won 66% of the popular vote, and a majority of free-soil states, and b) in 1832, when Andrew Jackson won 54.2% of the popular vote for a second term, it also was with a majority of northern Electoral College ballots as well as the slave-holders as a bloc.


 * 4) For about a third of the elections (5 of 16), the slave holding state’s permanent minority status in the Electoral College was further reduced by their giving a portion of their votes to northerners: 1848 to Cass-MI (47.8%), 1836 to W.H. Harrison-OH (21.2%), 1796 and 1800 J. Adams-MA (10.1%), and in 1812 to Dewitt Clinton-NY (5.4%).

The Foner citation should be removed. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 14:54, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

For further sourcing, see the Wikipedia series on U.S. presidential elections by year: 1788 - of 69 total, 25 or 36.2% in slave-holding states: MD 3, VA 10, SC 7, GA 5 (all slave holding states voted for Washington, as did all northern states.)

1792 - of 132 total, 57 or 43.2% in slave-holding states: MD 8, VA 21, NC 12, SC 8, GA 4, KY 4 (all slave holding states voted for Washington, as did all northern states.)

1796 of 138 total, 59 or 43.0% in slave-holding states: MD 7, VA 21, NC 12, SC 8, GA 4, KY 4, TN 3 (MD, VA, NC = 6 for northerner Adams, or 10.2% of its Electoral College vote.)

1800 of 138 total, 59 or 43.0% in slave-holding states: MD 7, VA 21, NC 12, SC 8, GA 4, KY 4, TN 3 (again, MD, VA, NC = 6 for northerner Adams, or 10.2% of its Electoral College vote.)

1804 of 176 total, 78 or 44.3% in slave-holding states: MD 11, VA 24, NC 14, SC 10, GA 6, KY 8, TN 5

1808 of 176 total, 78 or 52.8% in slave-holding states: MD 11, VA 24, NC 14, SC 10, GA 6, KY 8, TN 5

1812 of 217 total, 93 or 42.8% in slave-holding states: MD 11, VA 25, NC 15, SC 11, GA 8, KY 12, TN 8, LA 3. (again, MD = 5 for northerner Dewitt Clinton, or 5.4% of its Electoral College vote.)

1816 of 217 total, 93 or 42.8% in slave-holding states: MD 11, VA 25, NC 15, SC 11, GA 8, KY 12, TN 8, LA 3.

1820 of 232 total, 100 or 43.1% in slave-holding states: MD 11, VA 25, NC 15, SC 11, GA 8, KY 12, TN 7, LA 3, AL 3, MS 2, MO 3. (northerner Adams received one northern electoral college vote (0.4%) in the entire country, so that James Monroe was not elected unanimously, as only had George Washington before him.)

1824 of 261 total, 111 or 42.5% in slave-holding states: MD 11, VA 24, NC 15, SC 11, GA 9, KY 14, TN 11, LA 5, AL 5, MS 3, MO 3. (again, LA = 2 for Adams, or 1.8% of its Electoral College vote.).

1828 of 261 total, 111 or 42.5% in slave-holding states: MD 11, VA 24, NC 15, SC 11, GA 9, KY 14, TN 11, LA 5, AL 5, MS 3, MO 3. (again, MD = 6 for northerner J.Q. Adams, or 5.4% of its Electoral College vote.).

1832 of 286 total, 36.2% in slave-holding states: MD 8, VA 23, NC 15, SC 11, GA 11, KY 15, TN 15, LA 5, AL 7, MS 4, MO 4.

1836 of 294 total, 118 or 40.1% in slave-holding states: MD 8, VA 23, NC 15, SC 11, GA 11, KY 15, TN 15, LA 5, AL 7, MS 4, MO 4. (again, MD, KY = 25 for northerner W.H. Harrison, or 21.2% of its Electoral College vote.)

1840 of 294 total, 121 or 41.2% in slave-holding states: MD 10, VA 23, NC 15, SC 11, GA 11, KY 15, TN 15, LA 5, AL 7, MS 4, MO 4, AK 3. (again, all southern states voted for northerners W.H. Harrison or Van Buren). 1844 of 275 total, 111 or 40.4% in slave-holding states: MD 8, VA 17, NC 11, SC 9, GA 10, KY 12, TN 13, LA 6, AL 9, MS 6, MO 7, AK 3. (all southern states voted for southerners Polk versus Clay).

1848 of 290 total, 115 or 39.7% in slave-holding states: MD 8, VA 17, NC 11, SC 9, GA 10, KY 12, TN 13, LA 6, AL 9, MS 6, MO 7, AK 3, TX 4. (again, VA, SC, AL, MS, MO, AK, TX = 55 for northerner Cass, or 47.8% of its Electoral College vote.) TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 14:54, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Why remove, either improve the wording or introduce RS that contend with it. Slavery as a bellweather winded up determining generally "pro" slavery policy, administration after administration, for those four score years and this is one place where slavery was written into the Constitution. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Senate "policy" is not the express meaning of the Constitution. --- What Constitutional pro-slavery "policy"? You may be conflating the express meaning of the Constitution with the demonstrative Senate power wielded by the slave-holder states that were half of the U.S. Senate prior to 1846 — and the pro-slavery federal judges that they caused to be appointed.
 * — Constitutionally in 1808, international slave trade in the United States and by U.S. citizens was abolished by federal statute on the first day allowed in the Constitution with a majority of votes in both free-soil and slave-holding Congressmen and U.S. Senators.
 * — Constitutionally in the Treaty of Ghent was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate on February 16, 1815, | Article the Tenth, “Whereas the Traffic in Slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and Justice, and whereas both His Majesty and the United States are desirous of continuing their efforts to promote its entire abolition [emphasis supplied], it is hereby agreed that both the contracting parties shall use their best endeavours to accomplish so desirable an object.”
 * — Constitutionally, the U.S. Government under slave-owner presidents then directed the U.S. Navy’s anti-slaver patrols off the Bight of Africa, where all hands of a captured slave-trade vessel were not returned to the U.S. for trial, but instead turned over with affidavits to a British man-of-war, where the crew were administratively hung at sea as “outlaws”, and Africans of the slaver cargo were set free in Sierra Leone.
 * — Constitutionally in 1841, the Supreme Court ruled at U.S. v. Schooner Amistad, “When the Amistad arrived, she was in possession of the negroes, asserting their freedom; and in no sense could they possibly intend to import themselves here, as slaves, or for sale as slaves.” TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:36, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

At WP:No original research Even with well-sourced material, if you use it out of context, or to reach or imply a conclusion not directly and explicitly supported by the source, you are engaging in original research. . . In general, article statements should not rely on unclear or inconsistent passages, or on passing comments.

The offending passage implies, that over the first presidential elections, the Three-Fifths rule applied to slave-holding states so “enhanced” Electoral College votes — that the Constitutional pro-slavery bias compelled Electoral College elections of slave-holders in twelve of sixteen elections: So, let’s re-examine the publicly held, common knowledge. See WP:Common knowledge, “Well-known historical fact.”

First, in 8 of the 16 elections, there was no apparent “sectional” division between free-soil and slave-holder states. When not unanimously supported among the free-soil states in 1788, 1792 and 1820, slave-holder candidates followed a winning “free-soil” strategy in 1832, 1844, and 1848, garnering a majority of their Electoral College votes from states that did not benefit from the Three-Fifths rule. And in 1836 and 1840, non-slave holder candidates got 60-100% of slave-holder state Electoral College votes.

Second, in 6 of the 16 elections, slave-holder candidates appealed to more voters and received more free-soil Electoral College votes, ranging from 30% to 48% of their total, — versus — non-slave holders appeal in slave-holding states, ranging from 0.0% to 14%.
 * Jefferson 1800 got 27.4% of his total from free-soil states, versus opponent 13.8% of the non-slave-holder total in slave-holder states.
 * Jefferson 1804 got 48.1% of his total from free-soil states, versus opponent 14.3% of the non-slave-holder total in slave-holder states.
 * Madison 1808 got 40.9% of his total from free-soil states, versus opponent 8.5% of the non-slave-holder total in slave-holder states.
 * Madison 1812 got 31.5% of his total from free-soil states, versus opponent only 4.2% of the non-slave-holder total in slave-holder states.
 * Monroe 1816 got 44.3% of his total from free-soil states, versus opponent only 0.0% of the non-slave-holder total in slave-holder states.
 * Jackson 1828 got 41.0% of his total from free-soil states, versus opponent only 7.2% of the non-slave-holder total in slave-holder states.

Lastly, in 2 of the 16 elections, non-slave holders overcame the supposed “enormous” advantage of the Three-Fifths rule with a northern-section-only strategy in 1796 and 1824.

The out-of-context WP:POV push should be removed, that is, the misapprehension formed by conjoining two unrelated statements, “implying a conclusion not directly and explicitly supported by the source: that the Three-Fifths Compromise "greatly enhanced the number of southern votes in the House of Representatives and therefore in the electoral college," adding that twelve out of sixteen presidential elections between 1788 and 1848 resulted in the election of a Southern slaveowner.” Nonsense on 16 of 16 counts. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:42, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you mean by "Senate policy" but that's neither here nor there. As I said, improve the wording to remove the claimed defect, and/or introduce other sources that contend with it.  International trade was comparatively easy, as all the states already banned the slave trade during the Revolution and only South Carolina reopened it. The domestic slavery issue was an issue that a president had to not touch, if not out-right support -- when a person was elected who was seen as anti-slavery, the nation cracked-apart as foreseen by the earliest presidents. It actually makes common sense as a matter of politics that there would be a situation where who owns slaves is a stand-in for who is alright on slavery, or if they were not slaveholders to give other reassurance to the 'slavocracy' (several such were called doughfaces, right).  It remains that the three-fifths compromise is one place in the constitution that embedded slavery in the electoral system, and thus this article is a good place for Foner's and others scholars commentary on it.`But as I said, reword it or add more commentary from other RS. Electoral politics is putting together a puzzle, you need a solid base and then expand, if one had a solid slavocracy base you were on a promising trajectory to win. Constitutionally, of course, slavery was built into the electoral system, and as a matter of fact a slaveholder usually won. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:28, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * But a candidate could NOT win with a slave-holder-only strategy (see Breckinridge 1860), while one COULD win with a free-soil-only strategy (see John Adams 1796, John Quincy Adams 1824). In any case and as a matter of historical fact, during the life of the Three-fifths clause for presidential elections 1792-1864, while it boosted individual states about one-third in their Electoral College vote, the over-all underpopulated South produced about a 30% Electoral College MINORITY for the slave-holding section in the national majority-rule Electoral College.
 * Scholars of the Three-fifths clause and its effects in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Electoral College have asserted in a counter-factual thought experiment, that the Three-fifths clause may have CAUSED slave-holder elections only at Jefferson 1800 and Jackson 1828 --- but only in the same way that the Two-fifths slave population give-away in the Constitutional Convention by the southern state delegations CAUSED John Adams 1796 election.
 * See Brian D. Humes, Elaine K. Swift, Richard M. Valley, Kenneth Finegold, and Evelyn C. Fink, “Representation of the Antebellum South in the House of Representatives: Measuring the Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause”, Chapter 15 in David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, eds., Party, Process and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress (2002), Stanford University Press ISBN 978-0-8047-4571-0, p. 453, and Table 15.1, “Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause on Slave and Nonslave Representation (1790-1861)”, p.454. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 00:05, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It's never been contended here that a slaveholder - a minority always, even in slave states -- could only win with slaveholders. It remains that a member of this slaveholder minority usually did win. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:43, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * All true: “slaveholders [were] a minority [of a state’s population] always, even in slave states” (indirectly referring to English legacy slaveholders in Pennsylvania, Delaware, etc., and French legacy slaveholders in Illinois, Michigan, etc.), and slaveholders could not win with slaveholder votes alone (indirectly referring to South Carolina’s Electoral College votes which ALONE among the states cast its vote by its state legislature of slaveholding members, without any popular vote.
 * The point for our discussion is, that we cannot then suppose that the minority population slaveholder candidates won as a result of the Three-fifth rule giving the entire slaveholding section of the country a permanent minority share of the Electoral College — the Three-fifths clause did not control the presidency and the federal executive — because the Electoral College chose the president first by a majority vote, and it was in the U.S. Senate where slaveholders dominated with its president pro tem for two-thirds of the early republic and antebellum periods, appointing the federal judiciary, influencing management and budget policy, and perpetuating their power with a state admissions policy that maintained an artificial slaveholder parity in the Senate.
 * The point for this discussion is that slaveholder candidates did not ever win by a minority vote in the Electoral College, nor is there any reliable scholarly source that supposes any of them did so by the Three-fifths rule which “controlled” the presidential outcomes in American history, 1792-1864.
 * (although we have Humes et al, in Brady 2002, with a counter-factual analysis for a Three-fifths rule margin for Jefferson 1800 and Jackson 1828, — that is, 10% of the presidential elections over the life of the Three-fifths clause, — but NOT the 75% asserted by wp:cherry picking in the offending wp:tertiary sourced ellipsis passage.) TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:16, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Improve the wording to remove the claimed defect, introduce contending sources
While gently suggests that I should simply “improve the wording to remove the claimed defect, and/or introduce other sources that contend with it.” — as though the passage were merely WP:False balance, or perhaps WP:Patent nonsense, I cannot because the copy edit has fatal flaws.
 * The offending passage uses WP:Puffery, exaggeration for effect. It implies that the Three-Fifths rule gave slave-holding states “enormous” voting influence over the outcome of presidential elections. “Enormous” means “extraordinarily great in size” — but a permanent “minority” vote in the Electoral College that is declining, is not an “enormous” vote.
 * —However, it is true that, the Three-Fifths rule in slave-based Electoral College votes — apart from their white-based apportionment — undemocratically weighted each slave-holder state’s vote by a quarter of their white population in a “substantial” way, amounting to a 25% slave-holder state bonus. But that weight was “substantial”, not “enormous” relative to each slave-holder state’s individual Electoral College vote.
 * Then the offending passage uses a non sequitur fallacy, the post hoc (false cause), to imply that the Electoral College, undemocratically skewed by the Three-Fifths rule in a substantial (not enormous) way, determined the election outcomes, choosing slaveholders, — when those state EC votes were a permanent minority of the national total, and declining.
 * They declined in significance as their vote total fell in a continuing, uninterrupted and accelerating downward trend as a percent of the total, from 15.6% in 1792 to 6.2% in 1848 (no Virginia-based winners after “The Last Founder” James Monroe in 1824 when Virginia's "state electoral base" dropped below 10% of the total Electoral College).
 * Aside: that low, which merely declined further after the 1850 census, is now about the same proportion as one-representative states impact the total Electoral College of the 21st century—5%: another “undemocratic” provision of the Electoral College violating the “one man [citizen], one vote [apportionment]” rule passed by both Republican- and Democratic-Progressives in 1911, then lapsing unenforced until confirmed at Baker v. Carr (1962).
 * — Note: the following WP:Common knowledge rounds up calculations to inflate Three-Fifths rule impact, without consulting Census report figures used in actual Congressional apportionment:
 * 1790 census: 292,627 slaves x .60 = 175,572; total free = 467,789 = apportionment 643,361,, or 27.3% slave bonus in 19 representatives, 5 of 21 EC votes, or 23.8% of Virginia’s total, which was 15.6% of the Electoral College 135 total in 1792.
 * 1800 census: 346,671 slaves x .60 = 208,002; total free = 558,993 = apportionment = 766,995, or 26.3% slave bonus in 22 representatives, 5.7 (or 6?) of 24 EC votes, or 25.0% of Virginia’s total, which was 13.6% of the Electoral College 176 total in 1804.
 * 1810 census 392,518 slaves x .60 = 235,510; total free = 612,674 = apportionment 848,184, or 27.8% slave bonus in 23 representatives, 6 of 25 EC votes, or 24.0% of Virginia’s total, which was 11.5% of the Electoral College 218 total in 1812.
 * 1820 425,153 slaves x .60 = 255,092; total free = 680,115 = apportionment 935,207, or 27.3% slave bonus of 22 representatives, 5.7 (or 6?) of 24 EC votes, or 25.0% of Virginia’s total, which was 9.2% of the Electoral College 261 total in 1824.
 * 1830 469,757 slaves x .60 = 281,854; total free = 741,648 = apportionment 1,023,502, or 27.5% slave bonus of 21 representatives, 5.8 (or 6?) of 23 EC votes, or 26.0% of Virginia’s total, which was 8.0% of the Electoral College 288 total in 1832.
 * 1840 449,087 slaves x .60 = 269,452; total free 755,775 = apportionment 1,025,227, or 26.3% slave bonus of 15 representatives, 3. (or 4?) of 17 EC votes, or 23.5% of Virginia’s total, which was 6.2% of the Electoral College 275 total in 1844.
 * So — in this article, editors should agree to delete the offending edit that violates Wikipedia policy: WP:No original research “Even with well-sourced material, if you use it out of context, or to reach or imply a conclusion not directly and explicitly supported by the source, you are engaging in original research . . ."
 * In general, article statements should not rely on unclear or inconsistent passages, or on passing comments.” such as unfounded WP:puffery in the use of “enormous”, and a non sequitur fallacy, the post hoc (false cause), “a statement with a true premises and a false conclusion”, the passage implies the Electoral College Three-Fifths rule alone determined the outcome for fifty years of U.S. presidential elections for seventy-five percent of the fifty years. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:12, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

The “slavocracy” base, or was there something else going on

 * may argue that slave-holder candidates had a “slavocracy” base of support that was distinctly sectional, apart from other considerations. — I will agree to postulate that those ambitious for the presidency over this fifty-year period sought a “base” in their home state. However,
 * a) if the characteristic that gains a majority of support is not essentially “slave-holding” per se (in that a slave-holder candidate’s opponents are also “slave-holding”), then being a “slave-holder” is not determinative in the campaign in their home state, and
 * b) if the characteristic that gains a majority of support in the majority of “free-soil” states voting is NOT the candidate’s slave-holding characteristic, then Electoral College vote majorities made up of mostly free-soil states are NOT determined by the Electoral College three-fifths rule boosting a candidate's home state E.C. vote by 25% -- it just may have been the Republican-Democratic party platform plank to expand the electorate, especially to members of state militias without property following the War of 1812.
 * — since "voting for slave-holder candidates because they are slave-holders" does not apply to free-soil states; — also — from 1792 to 1848, free-soil states followed state and federal policies in their House of Representatives and state legislature majorities adopting internal improvements (Lighthouses, National Turnpike, canals, railroads, etc.), industrialization (passing incorporation laws, letting federal government contracts, etc.), and immigration (state funded train tickets from New York City, state voting eligibility before U.S. citizenship, etc.), that had the accumulated effect of placing the slave-holder state E.C. vote permanently into an ever-shrinking minority.
 * For now, we can put aside further discussion about those “slave-holder” candidates in the Jefferson-Jackson mould 1788-1824 using their national campaigns and their state parties to expand white male suffrage in both free-soil and slave-holding states — a policy that eventually brought about the election of Abraham Lincoln, who “idolized [slave-holders] Washington and Lincoln” (see | Lincoln & Jefferson article) - a candidate who was in many ways in that same old Jefferson-Jackson mould, campaigning with a “Free soil free men.” slogan in 1860.
 * -- Lincoln had a Congressional majority even before several slave-state representatives "vacated" their seats -- one that admitted Kansas as a free-soil state on January 29, 1861, before the outbreak of the American Civil War --- the fifth free-soil state in a row to do so since 1848, after Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon --- and one that guaranteed a pro-free-soil U.S. Senate --- and a further decline of the South's sectional weight in the Electoral College, the "Three-Fifths rule" notwithstanding. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:59, 31 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Democratic? There was nothing democratic about slavery least of all, giving three fifth's of a vote for each enslaved. As one scholar has noted: "This account must begin with the blunt fact of Southern power within the American state. In the two decades before the civil war, pro-slavery elites and their largely compliant northern allies maintained a vice-like grip on the executive branch of the U.S. national government, including the presidency, the cabinet, and important lower levels of federal administration. . . . "   I don't see the implication you claim to see, I see rather rational reasoning from the documents and the facts, the Constitution gave the three-fifth's award of votes based in the institutionalization of slavery, and the facts of history rendered the slave-power (slavocracy). ("Although not as readily apparent, the three-fifths clause was also fundamental to Southern control of party politics. The dominant parties throughout most of the antebellum period were the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Jacksonian Democrats. The power base of both was firmly rooted in the South, and Northern members jockeyed among themselves to curry patronage and other political favors from party caucuses and national conventions and administrations in which slaveholders, their unity and influence enhanced by the three-fifths clause, maintained controlling leverage over party affairs.")  ("Before Rael explores the antislavery movements that developed throughout the Atlantic World, he explains the significance of the southern slave interest that Lincoln and others have blamed for “somehow” causing the Civil War by showing “how exactly” they did so. He looks to the Constitutional Convention and the deals made there, particularly the Three Fifths Compromise, to show that slaveholders managed to amass a disproportionate share of power from the beginning.")
 * And I suppose I should candidly admit that I find you doing calculations and interpreting them to somehow argue against Foner, unpersuasive as a matter of our tertiary purpose -- surely there are scholars who have made the arguments you want to make, if such arguments matter for a tertiary article. Then too, you seem to really not like "enormous" but prefer "significant", so as I said rephrase. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:58, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


 * (1) ”Democratic? There was nothing democratic about slavery . . .” — but there was something democratic about slave-holder candidates political reputations and their state parties campaigning nation-wide over twenty-five years to expand the suffrage to non-propertied white males in both free-soil and slave-holding states by 1828. See Table: U.S. Popular Vote as a Percentage of Total Population.
 * (2) The offending passage is itself drawn from a wp:tertiary source, an undergraduate survey textbook by Foner with an unlikely assertion springing out from an ellipsis expressing a fallacy, the post hoc (false cause). It is a derived passage that may be of “well-sourced material”, but the passage itself is “out of context”, used to reach or imply a conclusion not directly and explicitly supported, by the source. So you are engaging in original research, as referenced at the Wikipedia link at "wp:No original research". TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:36, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Per policy, tertiary sources are good sources for our tertiary article. (What's not a good source is, pardon me but, Wikipedia editors.) Foner is a good scholar. You've said you don't know the context because you have not read the book.  So, your point is very poorly made, if you want to demonstrate an argument about the proper representation of Foner, than read the book and if needed adjust the text. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:30, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Secondary scholarly sources are preferred to tertiary textbooks.
 * To reiterate, see: Brian D. Humes, Elaine K. Swift, Richard M. Valley, Kenneth Finegold, and Evelyn C. Fink, “Representation of the Antebellum South in the House of Representatives: Measuring the Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause” in David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, eds., Party, Process and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress (2002), Stanford University Press ISBN 978-0-8047-4571-0 p. 453, and Table 15.1, “Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause on Slave and Nonslave Representation (1790-1861)”, p.454.
 * -- because they are notoriously copy-edited by uncredentialed publisher employees with unsubstantiated, off-hand comments used to exaggerate for effect "to engage the young [read, distracted] reader". TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 14:04, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * And you began this discussion citing no secondary, and no tertiary sources. Indeed, I implored you from my first post to cite sources,  and my comments are what brought secondary sources into the discussion, to begin with, by citing them. Tertiary sources are wholly legitimate. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Why, yes, thank you again. Are you fishing for compliments? I have already acknowledged our collaboration over the last five years, our general agreement on these topics, including the malign influence of the slave-power on antebellum federal government in all its branches, and I commended you for your continuing contributions to Wikipedia in subject matter relating to American slavery and the South.
 * I have used your wp:good faith sourcing from Richards (2001) in my edit post, and at your encouragement, continued in my research until I found a secondary source that was better than the popular magazine citation and a tertiary textbook source, an editorial improvement for the article by Wikipedia policy.
 * So now we need not stretch for an unsubstantiated the non sequitur fallacy, the post hoc (false cause), that we once found in the offending passage -- where two unrelated TRUE clauses were paired to give the FALSE inference that there was a causational link between a MINORITY slave-holder state base and the RESULT of slave-owner winners by delivering the MAJORITY free-soil state votes unanimously (1788, 1792, 1820) or a MAJORITY of the free-soil majority to slave-holder candidates (1832, 1844, 1848) -- something other than slave-holder identity alone was at work for the winners; the Wikipedia article should not mislead readers that there was an "identity determinism" linking an Electoral Vote minority section CAUSING the majority section to vote for the slave-holder candidate. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 00:32, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * As I have said consistently, I don't and didn't see your claimed inference, so that's in your mind, and not mine, and as you claim it's an inference means its not the actual text, it is something you inferred, not me. Compliments have nothing to do with it, it's just that the focus should have always been sources and their analysis from the start, and it seems it took over-long. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:58, 6 February 2019 (UTC)


 * You cobbled together two disparate TRUE statements — that I trust Foner actually wrote — 1) through the prism of a non-scholarly revision made by a publisher in a tertiary undergraduate textbook. -- But then, the offending Wiki edit places a SECOND order of separation from Foner’s intent — with 2) an ellipsis that FALSELY misleads the general reader on the face of it, in part by employing wp:puffery (although the one-third characterized by Foner as "greatly enhanced" individual state delegations is not the wild claim of an "enormous" slave bonus advantage that in fact lead to an uninterrupted sectional MINORITY in the Electoral College, a puffery that editors found elsewhere in a popular magazine), and in part by using wp:cherry picking to look at an editor-selected sixty-four years instead of the seventy-two years that the Three-fifths clause existed, the topic of the article subsection.
 * --- As a matter of copy-editing policy and mechanics, we will find that the Wikipedia community has a preference for the reliable scholarly reference from a secondary source preferable to support an article passage — compared to a chopped-up tertiary source with an arbitrary editor-imposed ellipsis that implies the denial of the secondary source coherently referenced to reflect current scholarship on the topic, "the effect of the Three-fifths clause on presidential elections over the life of is existence, from 1792 until 1864".
 * If indeed you were interested in “ sources and their analysis ”, you would have taken up my challenge from FOUR days ago, to transcribe onto this Talk page, the paragraph or two that you found on page 269 in the undergraduate textbook between Foner’s quoted “greatly enhanced the number of votes in the . . . Electoral College”, and Foner’s quoted “twelve out of sixteen presidential elections between 1788 and 1848 resulted in the election of a Southern slaveowner.” TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 17:52, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Are you lying now? I did not cobble anything together, nor did I "find" anything on Foner. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:58, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Why question my use of the words “find” and “cobble” with a personal attack?
 * As posted above, at 12:46 pm, 1 February 2019, last Friday (6 days ago), I pinged you to say, “please re-assure me that this ellipsis edit purportedly taken from a textbook paragraph is NOT yours.” —— And you replied, at 7:24 am, 3 February 2019, last Sunday (4 days ago), “I put the citation and links to the quoted material with the quoted material . . .” — — Doesn’t that mean that you “found” the Foner citation, — “I put the citation and links to the quoted material” - ?
 * Caution: you also posted at that time, “An ellipses . . . was just a way of showing the analysis goes on, that's all, I suppose I could have done without the ellipses.” — but NO, you cannot ethically smash together any old fragments from an original text, nor can you rearrange them out of order, without giving fair notice that you are manipulating the author’s words in the citation.
 * ”Cobble” means, “to make or put together roughly or hastily”.
 * In this case we have a "hastily put together" copy edit setting up a non sequitur fallacy, the post hoc (false cause), suggested by conjoining two TRUE but unrelated statements, 1) the Three-fifths rule was in some way related to an election BEFORE the clause was applied, 2) over only 80% of the life of the clause rather than elections over all seven decades, 3) ASSOCIATING (implying causation by) the Three-fifths clause slave bonus making a minority region in the Electoral College with majority outcomes, when as a matter of historical fact, seven of the nine of the winning slaveholders (not Jefferson 1800 and Jackson 1828), based a majority of their Electoral College majorities on free-soil votes; and 4) misleading the proportions of slaveholder victories associated with the Three-fifths rule (the topic of the subsection), as 75% "twelve out of sixteen", when as a matter of historical fact, slaveholders only won 53% of the nineteen presidential elections for the life of the Three-fifths clause 1792-1864.
 * And, you will not help me out to sort out Foner’s meaning here on this Talk page, because for yet another couple of days, you refuse to to transcribe the paragraph or two that you found on page 269 in a textbook, the narrative between the two quoted phrases that you “put together”, as in the common English usage of the word, “cobble”. — — It may be that I misunderstood you before, you did not “find” any relevant Foner quotation to apply to the discussion of the Three-fifths clause in the Electoral College, and you did not “quote” him from a tertiary undergraduate textbook. I never mean to lie about you, I regret any misunderstanding, and I apologize. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 16:02, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, if your sorry, I'm sorry. (I did ask it as a question, the question is sharp but no, not an attack). Your prior question was always bizarre, and inscrutable, which is why it drew a "What?" in response. The only "ellipses" (which is always rendered by three dots ". . .") is what I put on this page when I quoted, Karp, before you asked that question. I also have no idea why I would have to personally "reassure" you of anything - it was and is strange. As for the rest, I still don't agree with the rest, I have no reason to think whether anyone hastily did anything, nor cobbled anything.  The 3/5's compromise is associated with the slave power reiteratively in multiple reliable sources. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:57, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

On Karp references

 * At ,
 * (1) ”In the two decades before the Civil War . . .” — that was the twenty years 1841-1861, not the years of the offending passage, 1788-1848.
 * (2) In any case, Karp's generalization does NOT apply to any electoral determinism of the Three-fifths rule, it is about “pro-slavery elites [in the national minority] and their largely compliant northern allies [in the majority], [who] maintained a vice-like grip on the executive branch of the U.S. national government."
 * —- "In the twenty years before the Civil War", the Electoral College chose two out of five presidential candidates who were slave-holder (Polk-TN 1844, and Taylor-LA 1848 who did not push for slavery expansion), and three non-slave-holder presidential candidates from free-soil states (Pierce-NH 1852, Buchanan-PA 1856 — but Lincoln-IL 1860 does not fit into the author’s carelessly generalized chronology very well). TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:36, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * What? You're the one who wanted to talk about after Jefferson and after Jackson, so I brought Karp's analysis, after Jefferson and after Jackson. You also seemed to take issue with the slave power being in control of the executive branch, including the presidency, and Karp says the slave power was in control of the executive branch, including the presidency. ("the blunt fact of Southern power within the American state") Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:44, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * We are agreed, perhaps dividing over how the slave power effected its dominance in the antebellum federal government.
 * But we are agreed that the slave-power was certainly in control of the U.S. Senate, with their president pro tem in office two-thirds of the antebellum period. I emphasize that Senate control because there the slave-power was institutionalized -- artificially (undemocratically) at a parity with free-soil states that was not justified by the consent of the people -- neither the people voting nor the people resident in the states, those who might consent to their government, and so make it legitimate (take your pick, the antebellum federal system failed by the standard of the Declaration of Independence).
 * That "corrupted" Senate in my view, dictated much of national policy, 1) in the executive --- by their confirmation of executive officers serving in the cabinet and in appointments in those departments, especially customs and post offices, and by their influence over appointment o by their check on military appropriations (lots of forts in the South, fortunately at the Civil War, all made technologically obsolete by rifled artillery firing percussion shells, see Siege of Fort Pulaski.), and 2) in the federal judiciary throughout, including the Supreme Court justices, District Court judges and Federal Marshals.
 * The corruption, or perversion, of the ideal democratic republic that was in the American antebellum federal government did NOT arise from either a) the Three-fifths rule in the Electoral College, -- NOR -- b) in 12 of the first 16 elections (75%), from the identity of presidential candidates who won more than half of their Electoral College votes from a popular vote majorities and state electoral votes from free-soil states (whether non-slave-holders in 1796 and 1824, or slave holders in 1788, 1792, 1800, 1804, 1808, 1812, 1816, 1820, 1840 and 1844).
 * The democratic failure of the American antebellum federal government came directly as a consequence of the slave-power parity in the U.S. Senate. When that artificial barrier of non -Constitutional policy was removed with the entry of five free-soil states in a row 1848-1861, the U.S. federal government then was able to effect the will of the American people and their national Constitution to maintain the Union by ending the slavery that provided the economic basis for the undemocratic parity in the U.S. Senate. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:16, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Relevance. So what if there are many ways the slave power kept control, according to the source, the relevant way for this article on the Electoral College is through the 3/5 clause and the electoral behavior and outcomes it resulted in. Most the time, slave-holders won. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:39, 2 February 2019 (UTC)


 * There is both logic and historical analysis to apply to your non-sequitur posted above.
 * First logic (PoliSci 101):
 * Yes -- two undisputed historical facts: 1) the Three-fifths clause resulted in an artificial gain in Congressional delegations and Electoral College vote for slave-holding states, 1788-1848, and 2) most of the time (twelve times or 75%), slave-holders won.
 * And -- the slave-holding state gains by the Three-fifths rule awarding a "slave bonus" resulted in a MINORITY both in the House and in the Electoral College.
 * And -- the President was chosen by a MAJORITY vote (and the Speaker of the House of Representatives was chosen by a MAJORITY vote).
 * THEREFORE, the slave bonus minority did NOT cause slave-holder candidates to win their majorities in 75% of the presidential elections 1788-1848.


 * Note from American history:
 * In fourteen of the first sixteen elections where slave-holders won the presidency, most of the time (nine times or 64.3%), it had nothing to do with the Electoral College slave bonus . (See the following election years in bold.)
 * four times the majority free-soil states were unanimously for a slaveholder four times (1788, 1792, 1824, 1844), so they did not rely on the slave bonus,
 * three times popular vote winners (1804, 1808, 1816), so they did not rely on the slave bonus,
 * three times free-soil majorities (1832, 1844, 1848) were greater than states with the slave bonus, so they did not rely on the slave bonus,
 * (also, for an additional two times, slave-holder states were for a free-soil candidate unanimously (1840) and by a majority (1836 for two candidates), so the states with the slave bonus did not elect slave-holder candidates.)
 * THEREFORE, to imply a causation result for 75% results when 64% of the results derive from from an altogether different condition is a fallacy, the post hoc (false cause). TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 00:27, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Not causation. Built in advantage - slave holding vote was constitutionally privileged - politically, that resulted in large advantage, larger than bean counting, because politics is larger than bean counting. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:36, 3 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Thank you, not causation.
 * We are agreed, the slave-holding state vote was constitutionally PRIVILEGED, amounting to an average of a 30% slave bonus per state during this time period both in the House of Representatives and something less in the Electoral College — resulting in their aggregate MINORITY continuously declining over fifty years.
 * We are agreed, politics is certainly more than bean counting, which is why it is important to consider the effect of the slave-state parity rule in the U.S. Senate for state admissions. That accounts for the slave-power dominance of the antebellum federal government in all its branches (Richards 2001). TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 01:14, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It's odd that you seem to read out of Richards his contentions regarding the large political advantage of enshrining slavery into the constitution. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:30, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I acknowledge Richards' description the slave bonus, but that does not address the resulting regional minority status --- I say, "the slave-holding state vote was constitutionally PRIVILEGED, amounting to an average of a 30% slave bonus per state during this time period both in the House of Representatives -- and something less in the Electoral College".
 * The aggregate result of this privileging was MINORITY status in national councils (both federal and national party), an aggregate sectional minority share that continuously declined over fifty years -- even though an equal number of slave-holding states joined the Union 1792-1848, gaining the additional state bonus of two Electoral College votes per state.
 * The Electoral College had the Constitutionally mandated democratic rule to select a president by a simple MAJORITY vote.
 * To suggest otherwise by conjoining of two | disparate facts containing fundamentally incongruous elements, leads to the non sequitur fallacy, the post hoc (false cause) that we now find in the offending passage. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:02, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * But you do not acknowledge Richards contentions regarding the large political advantage of enshrining slavery in the constitution. Real politics is about influence, as much as anything else. The slaveholders had the unity and influence according to Richards and he connects that influence to its enshrinement in the three-fifths clause in the constitution, including the influence in control of the presidency. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:59, 4 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I do acknowledge that American slave-holders had a large political advantage because the Constitution perpetuated slavery.
 * — Indeed, among nineteenth century Americans, many southern state pro-slavery Unionists in the Fall of 1860 and Spring of 1861 argued that seceding from the United States would withdraw the protection of slavery in the South by United States power in a Western world that otherwise had abolished it and commercially and diplomatically objected to it, save Cuba and Brazil.
 * — Anti-secessionist delegates in the “Secessionist Conventions” of Spring 1861 in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee argued that it was fatal to slavery to make the northern states of the United States an enemy. The Secessionists countered with assurances that disunion would come about peacefully, even though both Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had promised to fight to maintain the Union, because they said England and France would militarily intervene on behalf of King Cotton.
 * As to this section’s discussion of Karp, his generalization does NOT apply to any electoral determinism of the Three-fifths rule, it is about “pro-slavery elites [in the national MINORITY] and their largely compliant northern allies [in the majority], [who] maintained a vice-like grip on the executive branch of the U.S. national government [by controlling the U.S. Senate until 1848].” TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 13:16, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Nothing but your comments imagines, "electoral determinism", whatever is meant that - it sounds like an imagined concept by someone, is it you or do you have an RS for it -- so, that's just a straw-man. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:07, 5 February 2019 (UTC)


 * "Determinism" relates to the term "causation", but without free will --- as in your post agreeing with me, the resulting election of slave-holders was not "caused" by a minority section when MOST of their total electoral votes came from the MAJORITY section.
 * You replied, "Not causation. Built in advantage - slave holding vote was constitutionally privileged - politically, that resulted in large advantage, larger than bean counting, because politics is larger than bean counting. Alanscottwalker (talk) 7:36 pm, 2 February 2019, last Saturday (3 days ago)". --- So, on yet another point, we are agreed. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 00:42, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Since no one was ever arguing for this imagined concept of "electoral determinism", it is, at the least, inscrutable for your arguments to imagine it exists. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:10, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Very well, we can agree to use our collaboration research with the two citations from Richards and Humes — reliable secondary sources of scholarship in academic publications without edited tertiary source ellipses. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:23, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

On Richards references

 * Leonard L. Richards, |The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860 (2001), agrees with my posts above, the reported passages DO NOT SUPPORT the contention that the Three-fifths rule caused or propelled slave-holder candidates to presidential victory in the campaigns 1788-1824. The three points of agreement with me follow:
 * (The offending passage is very much different than the Talk post that the Three-fifths rule “institutionalized slavery”, and “the facts of history” —- presumably other than the Three-fifths rule alone as implied in the offending passage — “rendered the slave-power (slavocracy)” — restricted to the Southern states, that apart from the artificial parity in the U.S. Senate, were nationally a permanently declining minority in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Electoral College, — even with their Constitutional Three-fifths rule bonus.)
 * (1) “The [Constitutional] stipulation that all states would have an equal voice in the Senate . . .  soon became a main prop for Southern [federal] political power . . . [when it was] Combined with a conscious and successful effort down to 1850 to maintain a parity between free and slave states [as new states were admitted].” — So, the Senate is not the dominance of slave-holder presidential candidates due to the Three-fifths rule.
 * ”Richards lays out the evidence . . . of slaveholder dominance of the federal government . . . This dominance was especially noteworthy in the sixty-two years down to the Compromise of 1850. During this period, slaveholding Southerners controlled the presidency for fifty years; they held such key congressional positions of power as speakers of the House, chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee” [due to seniority?]." -- This demonstrates the “slaveholder dominance of the federal government”, — but that "dominance" is not an "electoral determinism" of slave-holder presidential candidate success due to the Three-fifths rule alone.
 * [In the Senate, slaveholding Southerners held] presidents pro tem of the senate two-thirds of the time; [their appointments of fellow slave-holders] accounted for just under 60 percent of all Supreme Court justices; and [slave-holder Southerners] received (relative to the South's free population) twice as many major cabinet and diplomatic appointments as Northerners. -- This shows the efficacy of slave-state parity in Senate politics, but not the dominance of slave-holder presidential candidates due to the Three-fifths rule.
 * (2) “Nonslaveholding states and territories outpaced slaveholding areas in population growth . . . On average, the slave states received in each decade one-third more members in the House than their free population alone would warrant.” -- This is “substantial”, not “enormous”.
 * [My calculations for Virginia 1790-1840 indicated 25-30% as a “substantial” Three-Fifths bonus in the Electoral College, so happily they are in line with Richards (though mine are modified for the E.C. vote, plus two for each state — versus Richards’ observation of the 33% average bonus in Southern state U.S. House delegations).]
 * [I only established the relative nature of Virginia as an “electoral base” for winners in eight of the ten elections when slave-holders won 1788-1848 (50% of the total number under study). From 1790-1840, Virginia's share of the Electoral College declined continuously and trended downward more steeply from 16% to 6% over the six U.S. censuses.]
 * (3) It was not the Three-Fifths rule compelling slave-holder victory in national affairs. — Richards was observed to say, “As the Southern share of seats in the House steadily dropped from 46 percent in 1790 to 35 percent in 1860, so-called doughfaces . . .—Northerners who sided with the slave South on divisive sectional issues--became increasingly crucial to the securing of Southern political goals at the national level.” — This party politics among free-soil northerners, but not the dominance of slave-holder presidential candidates due to the Three-fifths rule.
 * “Between 1820 and 1860, [Richards] shows that the vast majority of these [free-soil] doughfaces--all but ten [of the 320 studied] — came out of the Jeffersonian Republican or Democratic parties. In contrast to their Federalist or Whig colleagues, these congressmen had to manuever within the structural constraints of Southern dominance of their parties and answer to more racist constituencies.” — This is the organization of political parties first in Congressional caucuses, then in national conventions by numbers related to Congressional apportionment, patronage, and voter turnout, but not the dominance of slave-holder presidential candidates due to the Three-fifths rule.
 * TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:36, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Are you not reading what I quoted? "The power base of both was firmly rooted in the South, and Northern members jockeyed among themselves to curry patronage and other political favors from party caucuses and national conventions and administrations in which slaveholders, their unity and influence enhanced by the three-fifths clause, maintained controlling leverage over party affairs."(emphasis added) Which follows by the by, "The South's other constitutional advantage stemmed from the three-fifths clause, the stipulation that slaves were to be counted as three fifths of free persons in apportioning direct taxes and seats in the House of Representatives. Since the federal government rarely resorted to direct taxes, the fiscal impact of this clause was minimal, but its political impact was enormous. On average, the slave states received in each decade one-third more members in the House than their free population alone would warrant. Moreover, these additional seats translated into more Southern votes in the electoral college." (emphasis added) Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:17, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


 * >>Second point first. "The Three-fifths clause . . . political impact was enormous. On average, the slave states received in each decade one-third more members in the House than their free population alone would warrant . . . more Southern votes in the Electoral College." --- But this constitutional source of enhanced numbers for each state, gives NO advantage, | superiority of position or condition, where the majority rules in the national councils, it is NOT "controlling leverage" in the House and Electoral College -- UNLIKE the artificial and undemocratic PARITY, | the quality or state of being equal or equivalent, assigned in the U.S. Senate by political policy.
 * Objectively I merely observe that no agent of " enormous " impact can result in a permanent minority  1790-1840, a minority that irreversibly declines in an accelerating trend, both in the U.S. House of Representatives, AND in the Electoral College for fifty uninterrupted years.
 * >>First point second. "Slave-holders' unity and influence" in party caucuses and in party national conventions was still a minority -- even with the Three-fifths clause enhancement. Their unjustified leverage came from the Democratic party requirement to nominate a presidential candidate by a two-thirds super-majority. This undemocratic practice eventually resulted in three Democratic party "national" conventions in 1860 -- the two-thirds super majority was from political policy, NOT the Three-fifths rule that netted the slave-power a minority position in national conventions. -- In the case of 1860 Democratic conventions:
 * 1) Charleston, South Carolina, where the overwhelming majority of delegates favored Stephen A. Douglas of free-soil Illinois, but the secessionist faction of the slave-power staged a walk-out;
 * 2) Baltimore, Maryland, where the Northern Democrats determined to go forward on the principle of democratic majorities in the states and in the nation without a coercive slave-power faction threatening disunion, counting on their free-soil base and the votes of slave-holding state Unionists (Douglas campaigned on force to preserve the Union in his "Norfolk Doctrine" (as did Lincoln). Douglas netted 15.5% of the popular vote in the South.
 * Nationally, Douglas (29.5%) and Lincoln (39.8%) together won 69.3% of the total popular vote -- Constitutional Unionist "old man" John Bell won another 12.6%, and that FOUR-FIFTHS (81.9%) of the nation's voters would prevail over the rebelling minority remainder, when ballots turned to bullets); and
 * 3) Richmond, Virginia, where the rump session of secessionist-minded disunionists met after their Baltimore walk-out to nominate John C. Breckinridge as a Southern Democrat, later a rebel Confederate general seeking to overthrow the U.S. government, who subsequently profited from the blanket pardon of rebels to return to law practice, charter railroads and make real estate investments in Kentucky and Wisconsin.
 * To answer your personal query of me, -- Yes, I do read and understand what you quote. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:58, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The source says: "administrations in which slaveholders, their unity and influence enhanced by the three-fifths clause" Administrations is the presidency. That you're trying to argue against the source because you somehow think a united-by-slavery minority does not result in enhanced or even enormous political advantage is just you taking issue with the history of political science.  It's rather Political Science 101 in the American system that united minorities can and sometimes do matter greatly, even enormously.  Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:12, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It is PoliSci 101, and evident throughout American history -- that various minorities get outvoted in majority-rule arenas, unless there is some undemocratic artifice to enable them, such as 1) a "parity" rule giving their 30% (and shrinking proportion) a 50% vote in the U.S. Senate, 2) a "two-thirds super-majority" rule in a political nominating convention, or 3) "gerrymandering" in a legislature to make a false equivalence of property wealth (such as numbers of slaves held) and citizen population in the geographic representation of "the people". TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 23:02, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
 * As the source says the slave power was in control of the presidency enhanced by the 3/5 clause, the three fifths clause that had an enormous political impact, according to the source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:03, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The sources makes no such claim. They say that 1) the slave-power had control of the executive and they say that 2) individual states gained an Electoral College vote by an apportionment slave bonus amounting to 30% or less. No source claims that the Three-fifths clause determined presidential outcomes choosing slave-holders for 75% of the first sixteen presidential elections.
 * The apportionment slave bonus did NOT have an "enormous impact" on the Electoral College because the result was a minority status for slave-holder states that continuously declined over the fifty-year period before its extinction. The slave bonus DID have a "substantial impact" on individual state apportionment, amounting to somewhat less than one-third of their free white and black population.
 * An understanding of this assertion depends upon the general reader grasping an element of wp:common knowledge in American history (or PoliSci 101): that both by law and in practice, the U.S. President was chosen on the democratic principle by a simple majority vote in the Electoral College (unless a majority was not achieved).
 * It can only be fairly, truly sourced, that
 * ''The Three-fifths rule slave bonus "substantially" increased state Congressional delegations among individual slave-holding by 30% (somewhat less in the Electoral College). Despite those increases, slave-holders were relegated to a sectional minority status in representative national councils from the early republic throughout the antebellum period. Nevertheless, by appealing to other national interests, slave-holder candidates were able to capture the White House twelve times in the first sixteen elections.
 * -- Note [1]: Only in the U.S. Senate did the slave-holder states reach a sectional parity that allowed them to dominate all three branches of the federal government. Their influence went unchecked until the federal elections of 1860, which seated free-soil majorities in the House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and the Presidency.
 * So that is what I propose. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:58, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The source does connect the 3/5 clause to the political influence wielded by slaveholders and that the "political impact was enormous." We're suppose to follow the source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:07, 4 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, 1) there WAS a connection between the Three-fifths clause to the political influence weilded by slave-holders. And, 2) the slave-holder impact WAS “enormous” — but through their control of the U.S. Senate — and only as long as that body gave artificial and undemocratic parity to slave-holder states admitted with smaller population territories, a policy ended by the Northern, population majority Senators beginning in 1848.
 * — Nevertheless, there was no “enormous” advantage in the Electoral College majority-vote arena, when the Three-fifths rule granted a never-endingly minority status to the otherwise privileged faction -- as a matter of historical record.
 * Wikipedia editors are NOT supposed to elevate off-hand and unsubstantiated comments from anyone -- including those by otherwise reliable scholars in order to give wp:undue weight to the main-space article narrative. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:49, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * What Wikipedia editors elevated 'off-hand' remarks from anyone? You do not even have a basis for claiming any source made 'off-hand' remarks.Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * wp:puffery is off-handed when the source is a serious scholar, to put it charitably. Where a scholar's draft text is exaggerated for effect by a publisher --- such as altering a widely used scholarly term referring to a "substantial", or "influential" phenomenon in peer reviewed publications, into a mis-characterization as "enormous" to describe a MINORITY in a tertiary textbook, in a narrative which is proof read by an editor without scholarly credentials --- the event can be attributed to an "off-hand" remark made by the scholar.
 * I note you have not seen fit to transcribe the paragraph on Foner's textbook, page 269, to help me sort out the author's intent? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 00:57, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * So, you don't like the word "enormous", seems like a perfectly fine English word and "enormous" has also been seen in another source, here.  Disapproving sources because we do not like their words is just bizarre, especially when you use a term "puffery", as if Foner and his book with his name on it did something you think is wrong. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:36, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The reference from “another source” was a popular magazine, not from a reliable, peer reviewed secondary source with an academic publisher. It asserted that the the Three-fifths clause in the Electoral College imposed an “enormous” slave bonus ("enormous" wp:puffery versus the one-third that scholars term "substantial" or Foner's "greatly enhanced" slave bonus in the individual slaveholding states) — which resulted in a slaveholding sectional MINORITY in the Electoral College —
 * — and that “enormous” minority generated by the slave bonus was said to “control” the choice of the "head of the executive branch", or "president" -- if not "determined" the outcomes of presidential elections -- from 1792 until 1864. But we can find no scholar to say so in an reliable, peer reviewed secondary source with an academic publisher.
 * But we have collaboratively researched both Richards and Humes in reliable, peer reviewed secondary sources with academic publishers — and THAT joint effort between Alanscottwalker and TheVirginiaHistorian — is the basis for the copy edits I have recently made to replace the offending tertiary ellipsis edit and popular magazine sourcing. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:00, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

On Rael references

 * At the Beverly Tomek review of Patrick Rael, | Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865 (2015), the scholarship seems a little less dependable.
 * “[Rael] looks to the Constitutional Convention and the deals made there, particularly the Three Fifths Compromise, to show that slaveholders managed to amass a disproportionate share of power from the beginning.”
 * But the “amassing” was a minority, from the beginning, and it continuously trended downward in an ever accelerating pace.
 * ”This particular clause allowed southern states to use their enslaved populations to gain extra representation in Congress, and this in turn gave those states power to dominate the federal government until 1860.
 * But as we know from Richards (2001), it was in the Senate that slave-holder states gained seniority and dominated the Senate by holding the Senate president pro tem. They gained seniority and dominated the national government through the committee assignments and patronage.
 * ”Only at that time [1860] would the northern population grow enough to pose a challenge to the slave power’s grip over the nation.”
 * ''No, only after the admittance of five free-soil states 1848-January1861, with their ten additional U.S. Senators, did the free-soil states gain a certain and perpetual majority in the Senate, overturning the previous policy of admitting free-soil states only with a slave-holder state to ensure parity in the Senate.
 * I prefer Richards over RaelTheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:36, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Why you think what you prefer is relevant is beyond me. So, you don't like Rael, he's a good source regardless of what you like or not.  Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:59, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


 * 1) Yes, we have “a welcome addition” to the literature by Patrick Rael, | Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865 (2015). It emphases the role of free black and enslaved black Americans in the national abolition movement, as does Ira Berlin, | The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States (2015).
 * 2) Yes, I agree with Rael’s overall thesis as restated by Caitlin Verboon (University of Maryland) in a review in the Journal of the Civil War Era, December 2016 — that In the United States, [unlike British, French, Dutch, and Danish histories], the development of an otherwise natural alignment of slave resistance in the rural regions and antislavery ideology in urban America was interrupted in the history of the United States by slave-planter control of the federal government.
 * 3) But — NO — Rael’s wp:puffery in a passing description of a malignant force in American history, to the effect that it “amassed” a MINORITY in the U.S. House and Electoral College by the Three-fifths rule is NOT “controlling” the federal government —
 * objective CONTROL in this historical case was derived from a national policy giving PARITY in the U.S. Senate, initially acceded by Senate majorities to give the early republic a chance to develop nationalism in every region of the country, and then perpetuated by partisan maneuvering in the U.S. Senate lasting half a century. That pro-slavery parity in the U.S. Senate imposed an undemocratic artifice on the American republic that was outside the U.S. Constitution, and besides any edge given to the slave-holder state minority by the Three-fifths rule.
 * U.S. Senate parity leveraged a national minority — Rael’s hereditary slave-owner “planter” caste — into control over the federal government in all its branches, legislative, executive and judicial— as ably described by Richards, |The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860 (2001).
 * A fact brought to my attention because of your wp:good faith posting here, posting that Wikipedia editors on this Talk page benefit from. I do hope that we can come to an agreement regarding the source of the slave-power control over the American antebellum federal government, and that agreement will lead to replacing the offending passage. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 22:23, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Hm? The House is a minority of the people (a body of only roughly 50 to 230 people that could only be drawn from a section the people anyway (probably a minority in itself that could even be qualified), during the relevant period - and its leadership even tinier)  The Senate is a minority of the people (a body of only roughly 26 to 60 people - and its leadership even tinier). The Electoral College is a minority of the people (75 to 300). The president is a single person. Republics are governed by people who are not all the people but a small set - a minority - that is the way republics work. So, given the relatively tiny bodies, and in the case of the president, only, one, a minority can take control, especially where rules privilege them.  (Moreover this in a era when communication between the seat of government and the people was long and very, very distant, perhaps an era when most people could care less what they did over there, as long as they were not bothered). And in the case of the president, a member of the slave-holder minority was almost always in control of the office.  Now if we were writing an article on American republican government in general, or Slavery and American Republic in general, a focus on multiple institutions could be useful, but we are writing on only one body, the body that selects the one president, the Electoral College, its rules and their effect, according to scholars. I would ask you why you think a slave-holder was usually the president, why the College usually selected a slave-holder, but your ideas on that are not germane, here - we look to sources. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:45, 2 February 2019 (UTC)


 * All very true as posted above, and agreed to.
 * Now, we part ways when you leap from those facts agreed upon to suppose that the slave bonus caused the slave-holder election, — when that bonus rendered a minority in an election requiring a majority vote. -- The Electoral College slave bonuses did NOT create presidential winners most of the time, even when slave-holders won. Most of the time, their majorities of the popular vote in free-soil states provided a majority of the winning slave-holding candidate’s majority.
 * I do respect your integrity. Would you kindly transcribe the sourced paragraph(s) on this Talk page, from page 269? That may help me sort it out better. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 00:47, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't get your fixation on the one true cause. Earlier you opined it was the party system that delivered control of the presidency to slaveholders, now its something else. But in complex social organizations many complex factors combine.  Here, our purpose is to discuss the electoral college and what it did. Constitutionally it privileged slaveholders, and in the end it privileged slaveholders by delivering control of the office. That it would not matter that slave-holding was constitutionally privileged seems contrary to sources.  That slave holding was constitutionally privileged matters - slave holding was an enterprise of a relatively small but wealthy group. Ah, wealth, perhaps another complex social factor.  -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:35, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * My only concern in this Electoral College article discussion for ANY cause of slave-power domination over the federal government 1800-1861, is to supply you and other editors with an historically grounded alternative explanation to the patently false assertion in the offending main-space article narrative:
 * that over fifty years, for 75% of the time, a MINORITY achieved determinative control over a MAJORITY-rule institution, the Electoral College, by way of a Three-fifths rule bonus to individual state apportionment that netted the slave-holding section an aggregate minority vote.
 * PLEASE READ CAREFULLY: I posted, "undemocratic artifice to enabled them", such as 1) a "parity" rule giving their 30% (and shrinking proportion) a 50% vote in the U.S. Senate, 2) a "two-thirds super-majority" rule in a political nominating convention, or 3) "gerrymandering" in a legislature to make a false equivalence of property wealth (such as numbers of slaves held) and citizen population in the geographic representation of "the people".
 * Alanscottwalker supposes, 1) "Constitutionally [the Electoral College] privileged slaveholders", -- which is true -- and 2) "in the end it privileged slaveholders by delivering control of the office" -- which is false -- the MINORITY vote in aggregate did not "deliver" a MAJORITY result in the Electoral College.
 * -- That is, the E.C. vote  less than 50% was never determinatively privileged as an E.C. vote  more than 50%. The assertion to the contrary is false. Other factors OUTSIDE the Electoral College were at play, which Alanscottwalker otherwise seems to be aware, except, it seems, as it relates to this discussion with me. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:45, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * You just misread what I said when I said, "in the end it privileged slaveholders by delivering control of the office." Control of the office was delivered to slaveholders in the electoral colleges, slaveholders took the presidency. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:13, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
 * More confusing, you indent a paragraph above as if it is a quote from "main space article" and represent it as being from our article.  But that paragraph you indent as a quote is  nowhere in Wikipedia's main space article - the Wikipedia article just does not say that. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:28, 4 February 2019 (UTC)


 * It is NOT historically correct to say, “Control of the office was delivered to slaveholders in the electoral colleges by their consistently minority vote in the Electoral College, where the majority vote rules (when it is found on the first ballot).
 * But, It is historically CORRECT to say, that from 1788 to 1864, “slaveholders took the presidency” due to the slave bonus of three-fifths twice, in 1800 for Jefferson and in 1824 for Jackson, AND it is factually correct to say, “non-slave-holders took the presidency” due to the slave reduction of two-fifths once, in 1796 for John Adams.
 * That is, Wikipedia can represent in its Electoral College article narrative, that, "Over the Constitutional life of the Three-fifths clause 1788-1864, it determined the outcome of the presidential elections in favor of slave-holders in two out of twenty elections, or 10%.
 * To reiterate, see: Brian D. Humes, Elaine K. Swift, Richard M. Valley, Kenneth Finegold, and Evelyn C. Fink, “Representation of the Antebellum South in the House of Representatives: Measuring the Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause” in David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, eds., Party, Process and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress (2002), Stanford University Press ISBN 978-0-8047-4571-0 p. 453, and Table 15.1, “Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause on Slave and Nonslave Representation (1790-1861)”, p.454.
 * — any wp:cherry picking drawing conclusions about a shorter time span is prohibited by Wikipedia editorial policy. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 13:46, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Since the main space article did not say that "Control of the office . . ." quote (and I never said that quote). You appear to be are either misrepresenting the article or misrepresenting me. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Please read your posts carefully. In this very section, you said, "Constitutionally [the Three-fifths clause] privileged slaveholders, and in the end it privileged slaveholders by delivering control of the office." -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 5:35 am, 3 February 2019, last Sunday (3 days ago) -- Why begin an unfounded and easily verifiable false personal attack? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 01:02, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Because your made-up quote ("Control of the office . . .") is not what I said.  It's something, now I see, you apparently attempted to misquote me on. The electoral college did deliver the privilege of being president to slaveholders, most the time slaveholders were put in control of the presidency through the electoral college, slaveholders were sworn into the office of president - that seems control of the presidency to me. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:22, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The point for the Three-fifths clause in this discussion, is that there was no majority in the Electoral College from the slave bonus in each slaveholding state — because altogether in aggregate, instead, it resulted in an Electoral College minority from 1792 until 1864.
 * While the Electoral College majorities “delivered” the office of president to slaveholders as you say, the Three-fifths slave bonus votes in the Electoral College did not “deliver” a majority to any candidate, especially not for 75% of the presidential elections from 1792 until 1864, as implied in the offending passage, not even for the wp:cherry picked period 1792-1848.
 * Especially noteworthy for this discussion, those slave bonus votes in each election did not “deliver control” over Electoral College outcomes from the slave section minority --- when the slaveholder candidates who won, garnered most of their popular votes nationally from free-soil states, and most of their Electoral College votes nationally from free-soil states. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:24, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * No one ever took the position nor even suggested that the minority is the majority, only that the slaveholders who were a minority usually in fact won. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:27, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * NOT "| usually", as in the common English usage of the term understood by the general reader free from editor wp:POV, which is, "according to the usual or ordinary course of things, most often, as a rule".
 * Under the Three-fifths rule influencing presidential elections 1792-1864, nine elections seated slaveholders as president, eight elections seated non-slaveholders, or 53% of the time. This is NOT the 75% stated in the offending tertiary source ellipsis snippets wp:cherry picking the elections 1788-1848 (versus the presidential elections 1792-1864, where the Three-fifths rule applied),
 * — it SKEWS analytical results applied to the Three-fifths rule by Wikipedia editors with wp:POV by 1) arbitrarily EXCLUDING elections from 1852 through 1864 --- the last four presidential elections influenced the the Three-fifths rule (22% of the elections under discussion), and 2) additionally skewing the statement by INCLUDING 1788 which was NOT a Three-fifths clause election --- where the Constitution' original text mandated a majority of Electoral College votes to the free-soil section (49 free-soil versus 42-including Delaware).
 * Seven of the nine slaveholder presidential winners, or 78%, were NOT elected as a consequence of the slaveholder state Three-fifths slave bonus margin over free voters in southern states --- the slaveholder candidates won by a national majority, most of which was made up of their majorities made up from mostly free-soil popular votes and from most of their majority made up of free-soil state Electoral College votes.
 * Four times the slaveholder majority came from popular vote majorities in free-soil states, with free-soil states Electoral College votes unanimously for a slaveholder candidates four times (1792, 1820, 1832-[Jackson & Clay, less VT-2%], 1844-[Polk & Clay]), three times slaveholder winners had free-soil state majorities greater than their slaveholder slave state votes (1832, 1844, 1848).
 * So, during the life of the Three-fifths rule, the presidential elections 1792-1864 elected slaveholders 53% of the time --- which is not "usually" --- and of those, 78% of the winning slaveholders based a majority of their Electoral College majorities on free-soil votes --- and NOT on the margin of Three-fifths rule slave bonus above the free voter totals in the slaveholding states. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 14:16, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * What nonsense. Usually, most the time.  And if Foner thought it relevant to look to the earlier era, then that is what he thought relevant - and no, he did not have to consult you about it.   The concept of the three-fifth's rule predated the constitution being in legislation of the Confederation - the Congress wanted to count all people except 'Indians not paying taxes',  but slave-holders wanted no slaves counted - the compromise was three-fifths.  The point is the same, it's a demonstration and illustration of the slave power, and yes the slave power took the presidency most the time.  And according to Karp, all the period between the 1840s and 1860. - Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:30, 7 February 2019 (UTC)


 * (1) I'm sorry, what is the Karp citation again relating to a Foner "slaveholder" reference for 1788 to 1848, and how did the "slave-power" take the presidency from 1848 to 1864 by the Three-fifths clause (as opposed to an U.S. Senate federal appointments explanation), with (a) non-slaveholders elected president 1848-1864; (b) an end to slave-state admissions for the remaining life of the Three-fifths clause; and (c) the U.S. Senate rejection of a "slave-state Kansas" based on the illegitimate pro-slave President Buchanan-endorsed LeCompton Constitution brought about by voter intimidation, election fraud, and torching family farms in "Bleeding Kansas"; followed by (d) the admission of Kansas as a free-soil state in January 1861 even before the southern, slaveholding senators vacated the Congress?
 * (2) Aside from your insistence that 9 is larger than 10, and that often-recurring result 47% of the time under discussion means, as a rule, "usually, most of the time", --- a startling assertion that warrants a wp:NPOV caution --- Foner in this ellipsis-conjoined copy-edit seems to be running down a rabbit trail in a tertiary undergraduate textbook passage with an unsupported mis-characterization of the minority slaveholding section in the Electoral College, which he attributed to a “greatly enhanced” three-fifths slave population bonus to individual state delegations, as somehow being ASSOCIATED with (or, to the average reader, fallaciously implying results were somehow "causing") slaveholder presidential victories —
 * (3)Further, Foner was (a) speculating off-handedly about slaveholder presidents before the beginning of the Three-fifths clause in presidential elections and the application of that clause which only began after the 1788 election. And (b) Foner strangely included the free-soil assertion of democracy in 1848 over the slave-power, which marked marked change U.S. federal history
 * --- (b) at 1848 and after--continued, ((1)) electing an ANTI-slave-power WHIG southerner opposing slave territory expansion, THE issue of the day, who also happened to be a slaveholder; ((2)) ending admission of slave states to the Union for the remaining life of the Three-fifths clause, 1848-1864 — numbering seven states: WI, CA, MN, OR, KS, WV, NV; and ((3)) electing NON-slaveholder presidents thereafter. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:25, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I have insisted on no such thing, and your claim is bizarre. The Karp and other quotes have already been provided but as you seem to have lost track of them, perhaps because of your odd sectioning, that you put in after the fact, here they are again, copied from above: "This account must begin with the blunt fact of Southern power within the American state. In the two decades before the civil war, pro-slavery elites and their largely compliant northern allies maintained a vice-like grip on the executive branch of the U.S. national government, including the presidency, the cabinet, and important lower levels of federal administration. . . . " Karp, Matthew (2016). This Vast Southern Empire. Harvard University Press. p. 4. ISBN 9780674973848. and "[1] ("Although not as readily apparent, the three-fifths clause was also fundamental to Southern control of party politics. The dominant parties throughout most of the antebellum period were the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Jacksonian Democrats. The power base of both was firmly rooted in the South, and Northern members jockeyed among themselves to curry patronage and other political favors from party caucuses and national conventions and administrations in which slaveholders, their unity and influence enhanced by the three-fifths clause, maintained controlling leverage over party affairs.") [2] ("Before Rael explores the antislavery movements that developed throughout the Atlantic World, he explains the significance of the southern slave interest that Lincoln and others have blamed for “somehow” causing the Civil War by showing “how exactly” they did so. He looks to the Constitutional Convention and the deals made there, particularly the Three Fifths Compromise, to show that slaveholders managed to amass a disproportionate share of power from the beginning.")" and "The South's other constitutional advantage stemmed from the three-fifths clause, the stipulation that slaves were to be counted as three fifths of free persons in apportioning direct taxes and seats in the House of Representatives. Since the federal government rarely resorted to direct taxes, the fiscal impact of this clause was minimal, but its political impact was enormous. On average, the slave states received in each decade one-third more members in the House than their free population alone would warrant. Moreover, these additional seats translated into more Southern votes in the electoral college."[3] Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:57, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * 1) Recall that the section under discussion is the “ impact of the Three-fifths clause on the Electoral College ” choosing a president over its Constitutional life, from 1792 to 1864. The impact did NOT favor presidential elections of slaveholders under three conditions:
 * — a) U.S. House of Representatives selection of president from among the “five highest on the list” of candidates in the Electoral College, a slaveholder Jefferson, in 1800, and a non-slaveholder J.Q. Adams in 1824.
 * — b) unanimous free-soil Electoral votes in 1788 at the Constitution’s apportionment, and at census apportioned 1792 and 1824 (less one) which were awarded to “Slaveholders” — their victories did not “stem from” a 3/5 slave bonus from a minority of their Electoral College total.
 * — c) “Slave-power” does not include ANTI-slave-power Whigs who were for commercial banks, business expansion, internal improvements, slave manumission and public education, such as free-soil W.H. Harrison in 1840 winning a majority of slaveholder Electoral College votes, and slaveholder Zachary Taylor in 1848.
 * 2) It is TRUE, as Karp describes, a "slave power" 1841-1861 emerged over the twenty years before the Civil War. That antebellum slave-power was made up of pro-slavery southern elites and their northern allies — who effected control over the federal executive.
 * — It is TRUE, as Karp suggests, patronage and appointments were related to slaveholder parity turned majority with their “dough face” allies in U.S. Senate “ party caucuses and [in] national conventions ” requiring two-thirds to nominate a presidential candidate.
 * 3) But that “vice-like grip” over the federal executive did not “| stem from”, “to be caused by” or “to come from” the Three-fifths clause apportioning a slaveholder section minority in the Electoral College — regardless of individual slave state bonus of “one-third more members in the House than their free population alone would warrant, [with correspondingly] more Southern votes in the electoral college."
 * It is TRUE as Karp explains in context, “[Slave-power] unity and influence [1841-1861], enhanced by the three-fifths clause, maintained controlling leverage over party affairs.”
 * — It is,as my collaborating editor has attested to, there is “Not causation. Built in advantage - slave holding vote was constitutionally privileged . . .” Alanscottwalker (talk) 7:36 pm, 2 February 2019, last Saturday (7 days ago). TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:12, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
 * As a central purpose of party affairs was the electoral college votes and the president, the slave-holder political influence was magnified and leveraged through the college. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:21, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

On the Foner citation and its ellipsis

 * It appears there is yet more confusion related to the ellipsis-conjoined copy-edit deleted from the article subsection "Slavery eclipsed", that arises from the passage that Alanscottwalker refuses to share in a transcript here for a week, now. In any case, the cited Foner passage is NOT applicable to this article section under discussion --- the topic under discussion is on the Constitution's Three-fifths rule for its duration, as it might have impacted presidential elections 1792-1864.
 * When Foner sloppily considered presidential results in order to off-handedly ruminate concerning slaveholders and the Three-fifths clause without any evidentiary support, analytically INCLUDING both presidential elections in 1788 AND 1848, in 1788 before the Three-fifths clause, and at the 1848 election of an ANTI-slave-power Whig, -- in a textbook without peer review with a non-academic publisher,
 * (1) He did NOT anticipate the 1792-1864 time frame used here in this article section, (2) NOR can his unsupported random tertiary textbook speculation be a universally applied "Foner gospel by editor ellipsis" used by wp:POV to make some sort of editorial equivalence by wp:undue, (3) NOR can the use of tertiary source fragments otherwise overshadow coherent sourced material in this article cited from reliable, peer reviewed secondary sources with an academic publisher. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:25, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Are you again lying? I have not refused anything.  An ellipses is three dots ". . ."  So, there is no ellipses. Your trashing of Foner as a POV pusher is bizarre, unwarranted and unseemly, quite simply he is a reliable source, entitled to weight, under NPOV, and you are neither a reliable source nor entitled to a POV. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:39, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * An editor's cobbling together of unrelated snippets -- whether in ellipsis form or using the convention, "authority #1 says 'a' and also 'b'" -- from a tertiary Foner undergraduate textbook -- does not necessarily give the editor Foner's voice.
 * Have you somehow lost your access to the Foner textbook for over a week? Okay, that's not a "refusal". Sorry, again. Mea culpa. De ja vu all over again. Rats.
 * I don't think I need your help with the Foner snippets, since we have sourced your contributions from Richards and Karp information in the article main-space now instead. I would just as soon "drop the stick", if you would like to do the same on this topic.
 * I have substantially modified my initial position, not once, but several times to accommodate your collaborative postings both here and in the article main-space. And I have made a point of incorporating your posted sources both here and in the article main-space into my edits as well. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:36, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I never said I had Foner's textbook, I asked you to get it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:44, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Slave-power demonstration at 3/5 tax and at 3/5 representation apportionment

 * Point of information and clarification : There is no “demonstration of slave power” in your referenced historical example. — There is no demonstration of “power” other than the “passive-aggressive” state legislatures under the Articles simply not paying up — on ANY basis.
 * At first, the majority of the Continental (Articles) Congress proposed a tax base for apportioning state requisitions related to their ability to pay — the value of “buildings and improved land” in each state — but the state legislatures never unanimously agreed, and the states did not comply. In a second effort, the Continental Congress did pass a resolution to seek the counting of a population basis (modified with three-fifth slaves) to replace the previously ignored “improvements basis” for each state — and the states did not comply. The Articles Continental Congress collected under 10% of what it needed to finance the U.S. debt as portions came due after 1781.
 * Reading resolutions of Congress alone does NOT tell the history of Articles government finances, because it omits any account of subsequent revenues collections following those resolutions. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:25, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Surely it is an issue of slavepower when the Congress wanted to count a slave as 1, and the slaveholders wanted a slave counted as 0, and the compromise was to count a fraction of a slave, rather than 1. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:07, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * You mean to say, slaveholders wanted a full 100% population bonus for slaves, a 1-for-1 count, but they so feared for their potential liability for any "property valued" apportionment in federal taxes, that they caved to three-fifths since they would get an representative apportionment with the Three-fifths clause, and the free-soil commercial states were happy to stick the slaveholder states with a three-fifths liability for any per capita taxation, which had been the rule throughout the Articles Continental Congress.
 * Certainly slavery and slaveholding touched on many questions at the Constitutional Convention, relative to both the states and the national section. But that does not mean that slaveholders won out at every point of contention for every case all the time to guarantee them the dominantly controlling interest in every thing all the time for the foreseeable future. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:48, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
 * No, I mean, that without the slave-power, the slave-holder interest, there would be no reason and nothing to negotiate between 0 and 1, but since there was the slave-holder interest with leverage, there was a compromise with the slave-power. Alanscottwalker (talk) 09:45, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Point of personal privilege

 * 1) I have been collaborating with you with considerable personal respect, mostly aligned in our copy edits for over five years -- please re-assure me that this ellipsis edit purportedly taken from a textbook paragraph is NOT yours.
 * 2) I have read and relied upon Eric Foner's scholarship in my classroom teaching and personal writing for twenty years -- (I regret I cannot find a way to preview the passage to get Foner's actual narrative context).
 * 3) My objections to the offending copy-edit are NOT due to an interest in blocking views of Foner or others related to "the constitution that embedded slavery in the electoral system".
 * -- MY OBJECTION is to a copy-edit implying that the Three-Fifths rule was determinative in 75% of the presidential elections 1788-1848 is primarily due to the apparent disjuncture between the WP article text, versus Eric Foner's reliable scholarship demonstrated over nearly five decades -- the offending passage is an ellipsis conjoining two disparate ideas that do NOT have a causational relationship.
 * -- Modern Marxists disavow "economic determinism" as a calumny of twisted misrepresentation that trashes the subtilty they find in Karl Marx's historical analysis, a sort of character assassination by his modern-day ideological enemies that uses a Reductio ad absurdum argument. --- Nowhere in my reading and research have I found Foner to advance a newly re-imagined "identity determinism" in U.S. presidential elections 1788-1848, that purports to find a causational link between any presidential candidate's identity as a slave-holder, and free-soil voters entrusting their suffrage to them BECAUSE of the candidate holding slaves. Given the permanent minority status of slave-holding states in the Electoral College, it was not the slave-holder candidates who followed a one-section-only strategy to victory from 1788-1848 -- it was the two free-soil candidates, John Adams and John Q. Adams.
 * -- (see wp:No original research: “Even with well-sourced material, if you use it out of context, or to reach or imply a conclusion not directly and explicitly supported by the source, you are engaging in original research . . .").TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 17:46, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) What? I put the citation and links to the quoted material with the quoted material, the citation and links are where the quotes are from (are not quotation marks suppose to indicate they are quotes from someone else?).  An ellipses . . . was just a way of showing the analysis goes on, that's all, I suppose I could have done without the ellipses.
 * 2) Whatever, you like or don't like about Marxist thought seems irrelevant, the only thing relevant is the notable strain of thought from multiple scholars that the Constitution's institutionalizing of a 3/5' vote affected the political outcomes (which seems hardly surprising). Now, theoretically there could be two extremes on that, 'not at all', to 'influencing to extreme degree'. But even if a scholar takes the position, it's "enormous", that would not rule out, a priori, additional factors.
 * 3) Identity determinism? What?  We are are talking about a political system, a system that institutionalized votes on the status of enslavement. All that matters is what scholars have written about that and the varying, or not, conclusions they have come to. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:32, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * 3) Identity determinism? What?  We are are talking about a political system, a system that institutionalized votes on the status of enslavement. All that matters is what scholars have written about that and the varying, or not, conclusions they have come to. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:32, 1 February 2019 (UTC)


 * No, Constitutionally minority factions gain control only by means of an undemocratic artifice . Multiple scholars have describe the Constitution's Three-fifths rule as resulting in political outcomes over fifty years for slave-holding states in the U.S. House and Electoral College that were continuous, downwardly trending MINORITIES -- those results did NOT lead to control of American institutions.
 * Any malevolent minority was capable of being constitutionally outvoted by a "majority rule" floor procedure in every national council, whether in government or in political parties. However a CONTROLLING faction in Congress and in National Conventions was effected by a slave-holder minority with artificially undemocratic rules requiring 1) parity in the U.S. Senate (pairing free-soil and slave-holder state admissions) and 2) two-thirds super-majorities in the Democratic Party national conventions to nominate a candidate for president. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 22:43, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Minorities take control because institutions allow minorities to take control, like say the president usually being of the slave-holder minority. The US was never a democracy, during this time, it was republic. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:51, 2 February 2019 (UTC)


 * The American political institutions that allowed the slave-holder minority to take control of the pre-Civil War federal government were the U.S. Senate under the slave-state parity rule until 1848, and the two-thirds super-majority requirement for nominating a candidate in the majority party national conventions.
 * The United States Constitution establishes a “democratic republic”, then and now. That is, the national government has republican forms that derive their authority from periodic elections among the people governed in some fashion described by law (which has varied over time both nationally and in the states), and it requires its state governments to be likewise, democratic republics. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 01:00, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * "Democratic" nor any of its forms is never used in the Constitution. "Republican" is used once for the states.  The Electoral College is not democratic (You don't think the framers wanted to set the college up as a democracy, do you? If they did, why invent the college, at all? Our Electoral College article contains this passage, "Madison acknowledged that while a popular vote would be ideal, it would be difficult to get consensus on the proposal given the prevalence of slavery in the South . . .") Its rules ignore the votes of many people, sometimes most people, some rules made by state governments, which are constitutionally required to be republican forms, not democratic - and its rules were even more republican during part of this period, in those places where the people did not even vote on the college, then too, many (most?) of the people governed could not even vote, at all, pursuant to the laws. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:24, 3 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Three | democratic elements in the | U.S. Constitution are explained in high school government and middle school civics classes. They relate to “government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system" — regardless of how it may have been restricted in the past by religion, property owning, geographic location or racial identity.
 * Article I, Section 2. "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State, [the voters in each state], shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature, [least restrictions, including lowest property requirements]."
 * -- [as we have seen, this bias for democracy, admitting the largest number of voters for federal office that might possibly be admitted in any state, was further extended in the U.S. Constitution in favor of democracy by Article VI, "but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States," at a time when most states required a religious test to restrict candidates for state office.]
 * Article I, Section 2. "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers," [modified by the Three-fifths bonus rule]." -- [as we have seen, this had the effect of augmenting the minority slave-holder states by an average of 30% per state, leaving them in a minority section of the national whole for the House of Representatives and for the Electoral College.]
 * Article II, Section 1. "Each State shall appoint . . . a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress . . ." -- [as we have seen, this reliance on the E.C. vote derived from a preponderance of population instead of the Articles undemocratic property basis for direct taxes, resulted in a ratio of 4:1 in favor of the population over the state-factor (in Washington’s 1792, 14 states, 132 total E.C. votes).
 * [insert Feb 9,2019] As well as Article II, Section 1, “The person having the greatest numbers of votes shall be President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.”TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 21:31, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It seems unfortunate for these so-called teachers don't even acknowledge women (as your "Regardless, . . ." quote does not even mention them). Excluding most people from voting is not democratic, nor is ignoring their votes even when they are not excluded.  It's Madison who made the point that slavery prevented the adoption of election of the president by the people. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It is not that the teachers of American public schools have a reluctance to acknowledge women, but rather, the common usage of the term “democracy” in the English language refers to the qualified citizenry of a polity voting in elections to choose their rulers, and their ability to oust them without resort to violence.
 * You seem to be referencing important distinctions among a) historical forms of western “democracy”, b) the evolution of citizenship and the franchise in the American history of “democracy”, and c) the entitlements of “human rights” as expressed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I also do endorse, including its acknowledgement of women.
 * In the preamble it asserts the "equal rights of men and women", and in Article 21 (3), “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.” TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 21:01, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * So, a scheme which excludes most people from voting and ignores their votes even when they can vote is not democratic. Indeed, a scheme that was instituted so the people would not be the ones voting, and a reason for excluding the people, according to Madison, was slavery. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:06, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Please distinguish between 20th-century " human rights " and historical application of the term " democracy ". Any scheme of government excluding adult men and women citizens from voting in frequent fair elections to choose their rulers --- is a violation of a 20th century understanding of “human rights”. See Art 21. quoted of the | Universal Declaration of Human Rights at my last posting, --- and also see, Art. 4., “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”, and Art. 7., “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.”
 * “Democracy” in world history and in American history, refers to schemes of government that base their legitimacy on the qualified citizenry of a polity voting in elections to choose their rulers, and their ability to oust them without resort to violence — however limited (or relatively expanding) that franchise might have been.
 * In American history, that citizenry of the native-born inhabitant adults has had a limited franchise and mal-apportionment gerrymandering in state and national legislatures most frequently according to 1) colonial religious qualifications and property requirements; 2) in early republic and antebellum periods by militia service and bonuses for land and slave-owning "property"; 3) through the Gilded & Progressive eras through the 20th century by gender and race.
 * 4) In the 21st century, gerrymandering results in legislatures and congressional delegations that do NOT "exactly mirror the people" as the Founders promised. Partisan voting patterns now ensure incumbent reelection for 10-year stretches between the decennial census (rather than in the Spirit of 1776: "frequent recourses to the people" --- the "people", of ANY description --- every TWO years). TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 15:02, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The request to distinguish is parsing the irrelevant. A system designed to prevent the people from voting, that disenfranchises the people, and ignores their votes even when it does let them vote, is not about the will of the people (but it can be about the will of a small group, especially when that group wanted the people not to have the vote), so it can be no surprise such a system may deliver control to a minority.  Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:20, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, Rousseau’s General will, the “will of the people as a whole” is not the common meaning of “democracy” in the English language. There is not much to say if you find common English usage and conventional historiographic categories using “democracy” to be irrelevant. Some see making such distinctions between and among, a) historical "democracy", b) aspirational "human rights" and c) the philosophically ideal "will of the people as a whole", --- distinctions as the essence of intelligence. I regret you dismiss them all out of hand.
 * I suppose there is some idiosyncratic “genius” we all have to acknowledge in the isolated desert ascetics around the third century A.C.E., making up stuff as they went along, living in cages suspended five feet above the ground, fed by the alms of passers-by. But what are you imagining as a role model? I hope it is not a sort of wanna-be Dr. Timothy Leary on his last North African LSD trip.
 * I guess it depends upon what it is you intend to do, communicate to others with meaning to some purpose among your chosen community, or to seek after the self-satisfaction of doing your own identity thing. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:25, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I also don't see how your taking LSD stories are relevant, but than taking drugs should probably not be mixed in with these conversations, at all. And there is an obvious lack of intelligence in making-up these claimed distinctions dancing on a pin-head -- they are rather evidence of a lack of understanding of actual politics. -Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:18, 8 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I only meant to acknowledge the importance of a general approach to life that is grounded in something like Socrates and his outlook as expressed in the quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living". It is so commonplace in Western culture that there is actually a set-aside English Wikipedia article-stub on it. I guess you had to be there some fifty years ago when it was socially fashionable to “find yourself” through systematic introspection of some description, — I just meant to give two extremes, as there is a danger of too much of it leading to a disconnect from one's fellows resulting in a failure to find some larger social purpose — but it seems only one of my examples “took”, and it seems as though you missed the overall point — my bad, it's all my fault.
 * I assure you that I am not the only Wikipedian who understands “democracy” as a historical reality in several places in several changeable forms, existing from time to time. Historians conventionally find it useful in describing "actual" political behavior, hence the B-class article on the subject I linked for you, with a "Top Importance" rating from both Wikiproject Politics with 320 editors listed, and Wikiproject Human Rights, with 170 editors listed. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:30, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Having to dance on a pin-head because you can't understand the difference between theory and reality, is both a sign of an un-examined life, and a lack of useful awareness. It likely means, inter alia, one can never get when and how a minority interest can and sometimes does predominate. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:09, 10 February 2019 (UTC)


 * So much obfuscating chaff: I point out three distinctions of governance related to reality, aspiration and theory, and you claim that it is me that “can't understand the difference between theory and reality”. You reason that a) because I suppose that free elections of majorities made up of majorities of free voters cannot be dismissed -- you will do in a post as a “claimed technicality”; and b) because I do not dismiss distinctions among historical democracy, aspirational natural rights, and the philosophical ideal for the will of the people as a whole -- you will do in a post, that they are merely three “claimed distinctions dancing on a pin-head . . . evidence of a lack of understanding of actual politics”.
 * To restate the obvious from our agreed-upon sources, a) the Three-fifths clause enhanced southern states Electoral College vote (Richards, Foner), that is TRUE, and b) the minority slave-power manipulations controlled the federal government 1841-1861 (Karp) — but that control was NOT a function of the Three-fifths clause slave bonus in the Electoral College, which produced a permanent minority section (see discussion of Richards and Karp that follows).
 * The U.S. Senate was the primary agent of slave-power control of the federal government. (Prior to the ascendancy of the imperial presidency in the 20th century.) That slaveholder faction of population minority used the U.S. Senate as its the agent of federal government passing or blocking legislation of national policy, appointing federal cabinet departments, and controlling appointments of a majority of federal judges, and patronage jobs (Richards).
 * -- 1) While the ELECTORAL COLLEGE selected 53% slaveholder presidents 1792-1864, the U.S. SENATE was led by 67+ % slaveholder presidents pro tem.
 * -- 2) U.S. Senate had control over Supreme Court, Circuit Courts, and District Courts appointments, and final control over appointments of an ever-expanding federal patronage machine of customs collectors, post masters, etc. found in every Congressional District.
 * Extra-constitutional political factors weighed in to sustain and enlarge the slave-power influence in national councils (Karp):
 * -- 1) Slave-power state legislatures gerrymandered districts to limit or eliminate pockets of opposition Federalist and Whig legislators in the state’s delegation beginning with the 1800 election, effecting federal policies, presidential candidate nominations in the Congressional caucuses until 1824, and presidential nominating conventions after 1832.
 * -- 2) For the 1800 election and thereafter, slaveholding state party machines adopted a “unit rule” selecting presidential Electors to end any E.C. votes from their states for free soil candidates balloted in opposition Federalist and Whig strong-holds.
 * -- 3) For half the life of the Three-fifths rule, national conventions 1832-1864 nominated presidential candidates with a two-thirds vote, making the slave-power influence determinative until that system failed in the Democratic Party in 1860, nominating a majority free-soil Douglas against a slaveholder Breckinridge. The result was ultimately the end of the Three-fifths clause at the abolition of slavery in 1865. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 17:34, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Talk about your obfuscating chaff. Just admit, the slave-holder minority interest was able to dominate throughout the federal government's institutions, all of them regularly, the president, the judicial, the "representative" bodies, etc. as one of the sources on Richards said, "This dominance was especially noteworthy in the sixty-two years down to the Compromise of 1850. During this period, slave-holding Southerners controlled the presidency for fifty years; they held such key congressional positions of power as speakers of the House, chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee, and presidents pro tem of the senate two-thirds of the time; they accounted for just under 60 percent of all Supreme Court justices; and they received (relative to the South's free population) twice as many major cabinet and diplomatic appointments" (empahsis added)   No matter what useless "democratic" theory you have, numbers on "electoral representatives" here or there do not tell the reality. It's naive in the extreme to imagine the electoral college would be untouched by such political dominance, and just a useless thought exercise to imagine the political dominance somehow had nothing to do with writing slavery into the fabric of the constitution, and beyond what the slave-holders always minority numbers could possibly tell. --   Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:50, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Observing and describing majorities in U.S. political institutions is useful in understanding their activity for the purpose of responsible historical narrative.
 * The “useless ‘democratic’ theory” observing the principle of majority rule in the history of U.S. political institutions is adopted by Foner, Richards, Karp, and Rael — sources that we both use, as well as Humes and his four co-writers whom I have introduced. In a study of the impact of the Three-fifths rule, those scholars concluded that a) the Three-fifths clause as a slave bonus did not make the margin of presidential victory except in the first elections of Jefferson and Jackson (Hume). And b) the converse counter-factual case applied only once. The Three-fifths clause as a slave deduction of two-fifths from the slaveholder states' slave population apportionment, made the margin of presidential victory for John Adams alone.
 * Slaveholder minorities could dominate the federal government through manipulating the U.S. Senate. The free-soil and slaveholder sections were held on a par from an EXTRA-constitutional policy — and NOT from the Three-fifths rule in the Electoral College.
 * — In the face of ANY “solid South” question, a Senate majority required only the slaveholder section plus one Northern supporter at every roll call vote to determine a) the Senate presidents pro tem, b) Supreme Court justices, and c) major cabinet and minister appointments. — This was NOT the impact of the Three-fifths clause creating a minority in the slaveholding region of the Electoral College. (nor was the election of Speaker of the House, nor House committee chairmen, where representation was always a majority of northern state delegations). TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:24, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It's bogus that you keep insisting on the Senate theory of yours - according to the sources, it was not just in the Senate where the political dominance of slave-holders was manifested, it's also in the presidency and the House. And according to Madison, the electoral college was needed, instead of election by the people, because of the importance of slavery. It's not at all surprising for anyone who reads sources on U.S. politics that a committed minority can dominate an indifferent majority. Now, a minority without political power cannot, but a minority with political power can and sometimes has.  From the constitutional convention and before, according to sources, the slave-holder minority had political power. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:36, 11 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Madison did NOT say that slavery was “an important institution” that should ideally would “dominate” the federal government — instead he said that slavery had to be admitted into the Electoral College to get consensus in the South for the selection of a president. Madison said the ideal was Pennsylvania delegate Wilson’s proposal for direct election of the president by a national tally of popular vote. The Madison quote says, that one serious difficulty with direct popular election of the president with “an immediate choice by the people” arose, because slaveholding Southern States could have no additional "influence in the election” based on their property in slaves.
 * Oh, no, my considering the U.S. Senate as the primary agency of slave-power dominance (but not your mis-cast "just the Senate" misrepresentation) -- where they had the majority vote -- is not a "preposterous trick" -- It does not suppose an editor wp:POV unsupported assertion that our sourced sectional MINORITY vote count in the House of Representatives, in the Electoral College, or in the national popular vote, somehow got counted as the MAJORITY vote as a historical event of record -- a fact that you rejected, then accepted, and now again reject.
 * The U.S. Senate was chosen by STATE legislatures gerrymandered to represent the minority slaveholding population by a “mixed basis” including population and wealth (slaves held). No reliable source claims “dominance” of a minority vote in the House and Electoral College requiring majority rule, however the out-voted minority may have been artificially “enhanced” in their individual state delegation apportionment.
 * As a matter of fact, you are wrong on two more counts: 1) no amount of your unsourced speculation about “indifference” among NON-slaveholders in the majority free-soil states had any impact to reduce their sectional MAJORITY in the Electoral College (that pesky "technicality" you complain about -- but facts are stubborn things), and 2) MOST of the slaveholder presidents were elected with a MAJORITY of their popular votes from free-soil states.
 * The STATE-made unit rule assigning ALL state Electoral College votes to the plurality candidate violated the intent of the Founders. Men at the Constitutional Convention wanted to enable the majority non-slaveholding citizen populations to be “virtually represented” by qualified property owners voters who did NOT own slaves in un-gerrymandered single Elector districts, and so to determine a majority of the Electoral College vote in slaveholding states apart from the slave-power dominated STATE legislatures. Selecting a president in a scheme that was temporarily and DIRECTLY from the people voting in the states and NOT from the "narrow interests" of gerrymandered state legislatures (or state governors) as alternately proposed in Convention --- was the primary rationale for the Electoral College, see | Federalist Paper #68.
 * — Madison believed that, “The district mode was mostly, if not exclusively in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted; & was exchanged for the general ticket [many years later].” — with the STATE-made unit-rule. (see | Founders Online: James Madison to George Hay, 23 August 1823) — — Indeed for the first two presidential elections, two states counted as “slaveholding” drew two more individual Electoral College districts than their apportioned Congressional districts — both the largest state, Virginia, and the smallest state, Delaware. Seeing that STATE legislatures, North and South, were drifting away from the Founder’s intent, Madison in Jefferson's Democratic-Republican cabinet, drafted a resolution for a Constitutional Amendment in 1801, requiring individual Electoral College districts in the STATES, as sourced in this article main-space, | Draft of a Resolution . . . (Electoral College votes in opposition to the slave-power continued from slaveholding states until they were finally completely extinguished in 1832).
 * Interestingly, in 1842 Jackson-Democratic majorities in the House and Senate meant to outlaw the most egregious STATE legislature gerrymandering using Article I, Section 4 authority to require them to draw “contiguous” districts. —That law was not reenacted. --- In yet another historical example of institutions of the federal Constitution advancing democracy by overcoming STATE restrictions: in 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that Virginia Assembly Republicans “packed” black voters in the Virginia Fourth Congressional District which jumped the James River three times, this time as a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as reenacted. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:20, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * One again you misrepresent the me, I did not say Madison said that. Then you take issue with the word "important", and then say Madison said the Electoral College was needed because of slavery (obviously, important). I did not say Madison said the purpose was dominance, but still the sources note slave-holder dominance through-out the period. The slaveholder dominance was not limited to the senate, on that we seem to agree, now you take a very hard line on your views of Senate, but your views on that are irrelevant.  As I have said all along, sources can take a view that something matters or not, my point all along has been sources can make various arguments, even arguments that disagree with each other, and the argument that the three-fifths clause mattered and that slave-holder dominance mattered has reason but I have never insisted that only one veiw be presented. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:56, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. I tried to make a point of making a wp:good faith effort in the article main-space to reflect the sources you contributed. I look forward to working with you on the next edit together. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 21:40, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Five problems with indiscriminate thought process

 * Five elements of indiscriminate thought process on this matter leads the reader astray: referring to "majorities" in U.S. history as "technicalities", asserting it is "naive in the extreme" to use accounts of E.C. majorities incorporated into reliable sources, taking nearly half (47%) of the presidential elections as a few elections "here or there", asserting that documented elements of extra-constitutional political practice in U.S. history are "just a useless thought exercise", and an overweening slave-power dominance effected all national institutions including those unconnected to the Three-fifths clause edge producing a minority vote in the Electoral College.
 * 1) You say scholarly observations of majority Electoral College votes are mere “technicalities”, — But scholars note that the Constitution provided for electing a president with a majority of the electoral ballots cast.
 * 2) You say that a scholarly analysis of the free-soil basis for Electoral College votes and the minority section of slaveholders (a minority, even with each of their states receiving a 3/5 slave bonus), — does “not tell the reality”, because it would be “naive in the extreme” to imagine an Electoral College “untouched” by slaveholder political dominance of the Supreme Court, et al. — But there is no evidence that the Supreme Court or other such slaveholder-dominated institutions tampered with the majority votes of the northern majorities in presidential elections 1792-1864.
 * 3) You say that observations of 9 of 19 times non-slaveholder presidents, from 1792 until 1864 are only “here or there” exceptions, and deny the impact or even any influence of northern majorities voting for slaveholder candidates. — But willful mischaracterization of 47% of the presidential election results 1792-1864 as “here or there” exceptions is wp:pov.
 * 4) You say that because the reliably sourced evidence does not conform with your preconceived ideation of “such political dominance” as was enjoyed by the slaveholder minority, a study of the actual history of U.S. political institutions using verifiable facts found in reliable secondary sources of scholars with academic publishers, is “just a useless thought exercise “. — But while there was slave-power influence in allowing slavery in the Constitution, you cannot then leap to the conclusion that all its national institutions must never-endingly converge to effect a minority interest “predominance”, when that predominance is explained by the extra-constitutional impacts of a) southern sectional parity in the U.S. Senate, b) the state-made Electoral College “unity rule” that eliminated opponents of the slave-power from casting a vote for a non-slaveholder unless it were for a slave-power party machine candidate, c) gerrymandering of House seats to eliminate opponents of the slave-power supported by free-voter majorities in southern states, and d) national conventions adopting a 2/3 rule to nominate presidential candidates.
 * 5) You claim that the slave-power dominance of federal government “touched” the Electoral College to make a minority of its votes determine a slaveholder president at each election, or as you put it, the slaveholder dominance in presidential elections “sprang from” the slave bonus in the Electoral College. — Even though Congress certified majorities after each presidential election, and the slave bonus provided the winning margin for slaveholders in only two times of the 19 for the life of the Three-fifths clause (Humes in Brady 2002). TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:24, 11 February 2019 (UTC)


 * You insist on misrepresenting both me and the facts. For example, the only time "sprang" is used on this page is when you say it, not me, yet you misrepresent it as a quote by me. 1) I have never said scholarly observations are mere technicalities, so your claim is false. From the beginning  I insisted on scholarly sources. 2) The political dominance of slaveholders is not something I say, it is repeatedly sourced, so your claim is false. 3) I never said that was the "here and there" exceptions, so you misrepresent, I have merely noted sources repeatedly note the slaveholder political dominance in the presidency.  4)  I never spoke of a preconceived notion, I only spoke of what sources describe on the slave holder political dominance, so your claim is false. 5)  I never claimed a minority vote in the electoral college did anything, so your claim is false.


 * It remains that, according to the sources, slave-holders were a minority always, yet they had political dominance, though-out the period, according to sources. Even as Lincoln wrote to a slaveholder in 1855 toward the end of the period, "I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations, under the constitution, in regard to your slaves . . . You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings [on slavery], in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union.", you have the minority slave-holders  actual power-politics based in the constitution. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:22, 11 February 2019 (UTC)


 * The constitutional basis for perpetual slavery in the states where it existed alone did not "deliver" an "enormous" advantage in the Electoral College leading to the slave-power "controlling" all branches of the federal government. Indeed, because that basis -- however supplemented by extra-constitutional practice 1) in the U.S. Senate elected by STATE legislatures, placing slaveholder STATES on a par with larger population free-soil states, and 2) in the slaveholder gerrymandered STATE legislatures redrawing gerrymandered Congressional districts, -- could not guarantee the continued existence of the "peculiar institution". In the historical event, regardless of any counter-factual and unsourced speculation about the importance of the Electoral College minority to slave-power control in the Union, slave-power secessionist rebels seeking to expand slave territory in North America in Mexico, Central America and Cuba, actually sought to overthrow the U.S. Constitution and its government -- and as events unfolded, they were prepared to spend 600,000 American lives in the attempt to perpetuate slavery into the 20th century.
 * And, there are no "lies" in my posts --- in the sense of intentionally misleading on my part. Are you sure you never mentioned “from the beginning” or “originally” or "intended", meaning “springing from" or "sprang from”? For anyone interested, they can usually search on quoted phrases in my posts here on the Talk page to find the context of a self-imposed ideological box preventing any acknowledgment of “democracy” or any democratic mechanisms in the history of political institutions evolving out of the U.S. Constitution in the nation or in the states.
 * 1) Denying any democratic characteristic in the federal government by observing at 1:59 pm, 5 February 2019, last Tuesday, [state elements of federalism noted here in brackets and italics]: “Excluding most people from voting [in extra-constitutionally made STATE law] is not democratic, nor is ignoring their votes even when they are not excluded [in extra-constitutional STATE slave-power promoting gerrymandering].” — that is a misrepresentation of the preponderance of reliable sources in American history. Virtually all concur that U.S. constitutional government was required in the Constitution for federal elections, regardless of STATE limitations, and the result was a scheme of governance admitting a wider share of its citizenry to vote than any other contemporary government on earth until the British reforms in the early 19th century.
 * 2) Denying any democratic characteristic in the choice of president, confusedly notes individual STATE practices [noted here in brackets and italics], at 11:20 am, 7 February 2019, last Thursday, “A system designed to prevent the people from voting [with STATE property requirements], that disenfranchises the people [with STATE racial and gender restrictions], and ignores their votes even when it does let them vote [by STATE legislature gerrymandering], is not about the will of the people (but it can be about the will of a small group, especially when that group wanted the people not to have the vote), so it can be no surprise such a [STATE controlled] system [apart from the Electoral College] may deliver control to a minority.”
 * Agreed, there have been evils in the FEDERAL system, but they arose out of STATE governments not enacting the principles of the federal Constitution. The nationalist intent in the Constitutional Convention was for there to be a population basis for representation in state Congressional delegations, in the state legislatures selecting the U.S. Senators, and in the presidential electors voting for president. It was STATE government that insisted in a “mixed basis” of representation other than population of citizens alone, to include the wealth of men and women held in slavery gerrymandered to outvote free white males opposed to the slave-power in the slaveholding districts of the states where slavery was permitted (see for example, Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829–1830 and Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850).
 * — Had the slave-power in the slaveholding states been content with the Constitution's Electoral College formula giving them a 1.6 to 1 advantage in STATE districts, instead of 10:1 or 20:1, the majority voting in Upper South slave states would have resulted in counter-factual ANTI-slave-power majorities in the state legislatures by property-qualified, then, additionally after the War of 1812, militia-qualified, free white voters (such as DE, MD, VA, NC, KY, TN, MO), --- and the results would have been reflected in the representatives elected from fairly apportioned Congressional Districts and in the free white non- or ANTI-slaveholder, "population-based" selection of U.S. Senators.
 * The institutional evils denying the “will of the people at large” (Rousseau) in “free and fair elections” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), is perpetuated in the U.S. due in large part to the continuing racism found in the STATES. It is NOT inherent in the constitutionally-mandated national scheme of governance following 1) abolition of slavery in the STATES, then 2) the extension of citizenship to all native born inhabitants and equal protection of the laws in the STATES, then 3) the extension of the right to vote to all qualified citizens in the STATES, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. -- Most contemporary resistance to the federal government's "violation of states' rights" is a misappropriation of American history in service of power-bases in the STATES other than the population of resident citizen adults, coupled with a continuing resistance to the application of the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits the states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 21:34, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * No. That you seem to have a problem with very simple ideas (and with misrepresentation) is your fault and not mine. That a republic would contain democratic elements is not disputed by me. Governments are generally mixed. That systems in a republic can be more democratic and less democratic is just the way it works, whether you understand that or refuse to understand that, or not.  And throughout these many days, it was always me who maintained in complex systems, something doing something alone, makes very little sense.  Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:54, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It's all good. You have made this old Virginia and U.S. history teacher very proud. Ping me if you ever feel you could use a collaborating assist in the Wiki-wars. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:07, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Sourced main-space article edit
Here is the sourced copy edit, deleting the popular magazine sourcing, adding scholarly references from Richards and Humes:

In the Electoral College, the Three-fifths clause awarded free-soil Northern states a dominating majority during the apportionments from 1790 to 1860, although In the first two decades, representation of the two sections was nearly equal. While individual state Congressional delegations were boosted by an average of one-third during each decade of this period,
 * Footnote: Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860 (2001), referenced in a review at Humanities and Social Sciences Net Online, viewed online February 2, 2019.

the margin of free-soil Electoral College majorities still increased over this entire early republic and antebellum period.
 * Footnote: Brian D. Humes, et al. “Representation of the Antebellum South in the House of Representatives: Measuring the Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause” in David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, eds., Party, Process and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress (2002), Stanford University Press ISBN 978-0-8047-4571-0, p.464-5, and Table 16.6, “Impact of the Three-fifths Clause on the Electoral College, 1792-1860”. The continuing, uninterrupted northern free-soil majority margin in the Electoral College would have been significantly smaller had slaves been counter-factually counted as whole persons, but still the South would have been a minority in the Electoral College over these sixty-eight years.

Scholars conclude that the Three-fifths rule had limited impact on sectional proportions in party voting and factional strength. The seats the South gained from a slave bonus were evenly distributed between the parties of the period. At the First Party System (1795-1823), the Jefferson Republicans gained 1.1 percent more adherents from the slave bonus, while the Federalists lost the same proportion. At the Second Party System (1823-1837) the emerging Jacksonians gained just 0.7% more seats, versus the opposition loss of 1.6%.
 * Footnote: Brian D. Humes, et al. “Representation of the Antebellum South in the House of Representatives: Measuring the Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause” in David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, eds., Party, Process and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress (2002), Stanford University Press ISBN 978-0-8047-4571-0, p.454-5.

The Three-fifths rule of apportionment in the Electoral College eventually resulted in three counter-factual losses in the sixty-eight years from 1792-1860: For the first one, as a southern compromise giving up representation of two-fifths of a state’s slave population, the Three fifths rule resulted in Jefferson’s 1796 loss to Adams. Without it, there would not have been the defining Alien and Sedition Acts that brought about the Democratic-Republican break from the Federalists. For the second two, as a northern compromise allowing representation to three-fifths of a state’s non-citizen population representation, Jefferson’s 1800 election and Jackson’s 1848 election would otherwise have been lost with a citizen-only apportionment. Both presidential elections were significant because they launched majority Congressional parties and Presidential eras.
 * Footnote: Brian D. Humes, et al. “Representation of the Antebellum South in the House of Representatives: Measuring the Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause” in David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins, eds., Party, Process and Political Change in Congress: New Perspectives on the History of Congress (2002), Stanford University Press ISBN 978-0-8047-4571-0, p. 464.

Sincerely, TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 13:16, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Again in this discussion none of your links work and this has been a continuing problem, do you check them? Also, it is not NPOV to exclude scholarship that stresses the political influence and advantage the 3/5 compromise gave to slave-holders. It is perfectly reasonable and sourced analysis that the enshrining of slavery in the constitution would advantage greatly the minority slave power, regardless of any claimed technicalities - it's constitutional blessing of slave-holding, a politically enormous thing far beyond any slave-holder minority, a minority that was usually in control of the presidency. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:26, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Linking issues. I regret that my Windows copy-paste feature does not seem to work any more for the site links to Amazon. The links have been removed. I am afraid that you will have to Search online for the title on your own. Likewise, the correction I tried to implement on the ISBN number also does not function for me at this time.
 * The copy edit has four editorial advantages over the deleted material:
 * 1) While the article once had a clipping from a popular magazine concerning the Three-fifths rule influence in the Electoral College, it did not assert scholarly expressions of such as the slave-holding section's "increased importance", "strengthened influence", and "significant extra representation" for the slave-holding section, but it used the wp:puffery "enormous" -- leading to an every-single-time minority vote for the slave-holding section. Choosing defensible terminology supported by scholarship is  not NPOV suppression .
 * 2) The previous unscholarly citations to Akhil Reed Amar’s contributions to a popular magazine, noting that Jefferson 1800 would have lost without the Three-fifths rule advantage is now reliably sourced with a scholarly citation. Capturing the same thing from wp:reliable sources  is not NPOV suppression .
 * 3) The new edit adds both a) the effect of the northern state Convention concession admitting 3/5 slaves in apportionment, which brought about the election of Jackson 1824, AND b) the effect of the southern state Convention concession giving up 2/5 in apportionment, which brought about the election of John Adams 1794. Three-fifths rule impact pro AND con on presidential elections is  not NPOV suppressed .
 * 4) The new edit extends Foner’s partial textbook wp:tertiary source observation on presidential elections about the 1788 to 1848 fragment, to encompass the entire history of the Three-fifths rule in Electoral College reapportionment, 1792-1860. Observations about presidential outcomes are  not NPOV suppressed .
 * It is indeed "perfectly reasonable and sourced" to observe that the "Constitution enshrined slavery" in the U.S. national electoral process, both in the House and in the Electoral College. However as Richards (2001) ably demonstrated, the actual control of the national government in all its three branches was derived primarily from the artificial sectional parity in the U.S. Senate, admitting an equal number of slave states equal to free-soil states with far larger populations, even at admission. That control was further perpetuated in national party conventions both in apportionment and by their two-thirds rule for presidential nomination, and in state legislature gerrymandering of both U.S. House and state legislature districts.
 * The "claimed technicalities" are the reliably sourced evidence of historical fact. The Three-fifths rule itself did not alone bring about a one-section-only slave-owner-based majority in the House of Representatives. Nor did it in the election of president, with the exceptions of free-soil Adams 1796 -- who gained by cutting slave apportioned population by Two -fifths, and Jefferson 1800 along with Jackson 1824 -- who gained by adding slave apportioned population by Three -fifths.
 * Our agreed upon "politically enormous thing" was perpetuating slavery, as it perverted American democracy at the origin of the U.S. republic, and that was in my view, an expedient accommodation with an immoral institution for the sake of the Union -- a union that participants believed was required to gain national independence and the promise of a better government than the British colonial empire had delivered. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:42, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Since no one posited the three-fifths rule alone brought that, that's a straw-man. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Then we are agreed to dispense with the previous misleading passage containing the non sequitur fallacy, the post hoc (false cause), --- suggested by conjoining two true but unrelated statements: "As historian Eric Foner writes, the Three-Fifths Compromise 'greatly enhanced the number of southern votes in the House of Representatives and therefore in the electoral college,' adding that twelve out of sixteen presidential elections between 1788 and 1848 resulted in the election of a Southern slaveowner." -- TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 01:12, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * No. I still don't see the inference you claim to see. It does not say "alone", and I do not read that into it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:26, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay, but we are agreed, we have collaboratively researched both Richards and Humes in reliable, peer reviewed secondary sources with an academic publisher — and THAT joint effort between Alanscottwalker and TheVirginiaHistorian — is the basis for the copy edits I have recently made to replace the offending tertiary sourced ellipsis edit and popular magazine sourcing. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 21:06, 6 February 2019 (UTC)