re: The National Archives Says The U.S. Constitution Has ‘Harmful Language’

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(The 3/5 Compromise was) beautiful, foresightful and compassionate

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The constitution is an amazing piece of craftsmanship, given the difficulties which faced the Founders from 13 such disparate colonies. But it is endlessly entertaining to see the extent to which some people treat it as some sort of divinely-inspired, quadi-religious document.

The 3/5 compromise was horsetrading. The north wanted to assign taxes based upon full population, but wanted apportionment to exclude slaves entirely. This would have benefitted the North, and the South refused.

The slaveholding states wanted to include all slaves for purposes of congressional apportionment, but did not want to include them at all for taxation purposes. This would have benefited the South to the detriment of the North.

To create a national framework which everyone would accept, some bright people decided to compromise. Someone pulled the number 3/5 out of his arse. Three-Fifths worked well for a while, until it didn’t.

Interestingly, both sides were more worried about the taxation angle than the apportionment angle. Several southern states suggested 1/2 (lower taxes AND representation for the South), and several New England states suggested 3/4 (higher taxes and representation for the South).

This isn't what everyone in this thread seems to think it is.

LINK

In recent days, a number of prominent social media users have highlighted that the U.S. National Archives Catalog website has placed a harmful language alert above the Constitution. Politician Lauren Boebert even claimed that this was an attempt by left-wing politicians to eliminate the Constitution.

The Constitution and other historical U.S. documents have not been singled out for harmful language, as the alert appears on almost every page of the National Archives Catalog website. It is even present on pages that do not relate to a specific document, including the homepage.

It is also on every page of the catalog that we researched. The disclaimer is intended to cover the catalog's entirety, with no individual document being labeled as containing harmful language.

The harmful content alert does not appear on the non-catalog National Archives website, which allows individuals to explore the archives with ease.