[cowfriend]

Um, no.

The three-fifths compromise was to reduce the power of the Southern states in the House of Representatives. The southern states wanted slaves counted in their population, thus increasing the southern's states power in that house, even though the slaves themselves would not have any voice in who was elected. The southern states would have (and did) use this power to continue slavery.

Re: the founding fathers and slave ownership. Thomas Jefferson treated his slaves as free people. Why didn't he actually emancipate them? Well, let's say he did, would anyone else recognize them as emancipated, respect their rights to own property, to work, to be free?

Be careful how you apply the context of this era when judging past eras.

And wonder how future generations will view us, who destroyed and slaughtered the earth for what?

[neaden]

Thomas Jefferson did no such thing, he had his slaves whipped, sold them apart from their families, and other common practices. https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slaver... Additionally in his lifetime emancipating slaves was relatively easy compared to later times and groups that purchased and freed enslaved people existed. Everything in that paragraph is false.

[cocacola1]

> Be careful how you apply the context of this era when judging past eras.

But it’s literally their own context, as many of the Founding Fathers wrote negatively about slavery. It’s judging them by their own standard. I’m not sure they’d mind.