The representation, ostensibly of slaves, under the names of persons, was in its operation an exclusive grant of power to one class of proprietors, owners of one species of property, to the detriment of the rest of the community. This species of property was odious in its nature, held in direct violation of the natural and inalienable rights of man, and of the vital principles of Christianity; it was all accumulated in one geographical section of the country, and it was held by wealthy men, comparatively small in numbers, not amounting to a tenth part of the free white population of the States in which it was concentrated. . .
In some of the ancient, and in some modern republics, extraordinary political power and privileges have been invested in the owners of horses; but then these privileges and these powers have been granted for the equivalent of extraordinary duties and services to the community required of the favored class. The Roman kings constituted the cavalry of their armies, and the bushels of rings gathered by Hannibal from their dead bodies after the battle of Cannae amply proves that the special powers conferred upon them were no gratuitous grants. But in the Constitution of the United States, the political power invested in the owners of slaves is entirely gratuitous. No extraordinary service is required of them; they are, on the contrary, themselves grievous burdens upon the community, always threatened with the danger of insurrections, to be smothered in the blood of both parties, master and slave, and always depressing the condition of the poor free laborer, by competition with the labor of the slave. The property in horses was the gift of God to man at the creation of the world; the property in slaves is property acquired and held by crimes, differing in no moral aspect from the pillage of a freebooter, and to which no lapse in time can give a prescriptive right. You are told that this is no concern of yours, and that the question of freedom and slavery is exclusively reserved to the consideration of the separate States.
But if it so be so, as to the mere question of the right between master and slave, it is of tremendous concern to you that this little cluster of slave owners should possess, besides their own share in the representative hall of the nation the exclusive privilege of appointing two fifths of the whole number to the representatives of the people.
This is now your condition, under the delusive ambiguity of language and of principles, which begins by declaring the representation of the popular branch of the legislature a representation of persons, and then provides that one class of persons shall have neither part nor lot in the choice of their representatives; but their elective franchise shall be transferred to their masters, and the oppressors shall represent the oppressed.
I will break in here to point out that what was begun in blackmail corruption in the original Constitution ironically and tragically achieved an even more perfect deal for our indigenous form of fascism, white supremacy, after "emancipation" because under voter suppression and terrorism in the Supreme Court sanctioned Jim Crow era of de facto slavery, that partial representation became, legally, full representation which was then stolen by the white supremacists. AND THAT IS SOMETHING THE ROBERTS COURT AND REPUBLICAN-FASCISM IS BRINGING US BACK TO AT FULL SPEED.
The same perversions of the representative principle pollutes the composition of the colleges of electors of President and Vice President of the United States, and every department of the government of the Union is thus tainted at its source by the gangrene of slavery.
John Quincy Adams's Address at North Bridgewater,
As valuable as it is to consult the historical forms of anti-equality and the thwarting of real democracy - which is egalitarian or it's just a democracy of gangsters and aristocrats lording it over all others - the innovative and creative applications of those old forms which are a product of the language of the Constitution, further laws adopted under it, including The Bill of Rights and, especially at the hands of the Supreme Court, as I think we're about to see again in a novel interpretation of the much Court corrupted 14th Amendment, they are always turning the best intentions of reformers of the past on to themselves often taking advantage of or using the slave-power privileging features of the original document.
There is no such a thing as a perfect human invention, that's true whether it's a fairly simple computer program or the structure of institutions or of governments and codes of law. There is not any one of them which cannot fail unintentionally, and in the cases of Constitutions, "Bills and Charters of Rights" there is not one which lawyers will not look for opportunities to make corrupt loop holes in them and which the senior level of the lawyering industry, judges and "justices" won't join with them in using those to legislate from the bench, even distorting the plain meaning of the law and its legislative record of drafting and adoption. The profession of "law scholar" is full of those who have made a career of creating and promoting even the most corrupt of those, as the overt "unitary executive" fascism among the perfumed, well-manicured "Constitutional scholars" in their fine-wood paneled and upholstered studies are always putting into effect. There is nothing in the Constitution which protects it OR US from the courts doing that. Never trust the elites of any sector of life, but those in the law least of all. That's what I meant in pointing out that not all of the slave-power, which can be effectively called "Republican-fascism" in 2024 terms, were originally intended to be that. That the "founders" didn't intend that to result in enhancing the power of them does not change their character in their real life application. Basing representation and, with that, the Electoral College representation on the mere Census count INSTEAD OF THE NUMBER OF ELIGIBLE VOTERS WHO ARE IN FACT ALLOWED TO CAST A BALLOT, was turned into an empowerment of slave owners or, under white supremacy and Republican-fascism, those who steal that representation for themselves. I don't think there's any way to end that usurpation except to base the representation of every state on the number of eligible voters counted in the Census who are then allowed to vote and who, in fact, DO VOTE. If that were in effect, every ex-Confederate State, the Northern, Mid-Western and Western states in which voter suppression is practiced WOULD BE FORCED TO ENCOURAGE EVERY ELIGIBLE VOTER TO BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS AND TO CAST A VOTE IN VERY ELECTION. Instead of the practice of voter suppression and representation stealing which was instituted in the Constitution from the start. Considering how such practices as gerrymandering arose as soon as the ink was dry on that thing, INSTITUTED BY ONE OF THE SIGNERS OF THE DOCUMENT, I have no doubt that the advantage of stealing the representation of those enslaved for themselves in the 3/5ths provision to the slave holders was in their minds even as they were arguing for stealing 5/5ths of it.
He continued:
Fellow-citizens, - with a body of men thus composed for legislators and executors of the laws, what will, what must be, what has been your legislation? The number of freemen constituting your nation are much greater than those of the slave holding States, bond and free. You have at least three fifths of the whole population of the Union. Your influence on the legislation and administration of the government ought to be the proportion of three to two. But how stands the fact? Besides the legitimate proportion of influence exercised by the slave holding States by the measure of their numbers, there is an intrusive influence in every department by a representation nominally of persons, but really of property, ostensibly of slaves, but effectively by their masters, over-balancing your superiority in numbers, adding two fifths of supplementary power to the two-fiftha fairly secured to them by the compact, CONTROLLING AND OVERRULING THE WHOLE ACTION OF YOUR GOVERNMENT AT HOME AND ABROAD, and warping it to the sordid private interest and oppressive policy of 300,000 owners of slaves.
From the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, the institution of domestic slavery has been becoming more and more the abhorrence of the civilized world. But in proportion as it has been growing odious to all the rest of mankind, it has been sinking deeper and deeper into the affections of the owners of slaves themselves. The cultivation of cotton and sugar, unknown in the Union at the establishment of the Constitution, has added largely to the pecuniary value of a slave. And the suppression of the African slave trade as piracy upon the pain of death, by securing the benefit of a monopoly to the virtuous slaveholders of the ancient dominion, has turned her heroic tyrannicides into a community of slave breeders and converted the land of GEORGE WASHINGTON, PATRICK HENRY, RICHARD HENRY LEE, and THOMAS JEFFERSON, into a great barracoon - a cattle-show of human beings, an emporium of which the staple articles of merchandise are the flesh and blood, the bones and sinews of immortal man.
The Ken Burns view of the Civil War, for whatever virtues it had, did an enormous disservice by repeating and enhancing the original lie of that war and its aftermath, that it defeated our indigenous form of fascism, white supremacy and the slave power which is the foremost motive of it and its greatest benficiaries. The Reconstruction experience was suppressed not even a dozen years after the Civil War ended and the long period of de facto slavery and voter suppression and terror lasted for more than ninety years after that. The brief period after the mid-1960s Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts began to be eroded with the 1968 election in which a combined force of George Wallace and Richard Nixon took the presidency and began the turn back which is in full force right now. That the figurehead of the Civil Rights movement that brought us to that brief period of an attempt at actual democracy, The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. was assassinated that year is certainly relevant to a real understanding of how the slave-power never has been defeated, in the form of white supremacy. And, as John Quincy Adams noted, among those who were victims of that were many white people, being able to hold people in virtual slavery or at even lower slave-wage wages " always depressing the condition of the poor free laborer, by competition with the labor of the slave."