We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Chapter 3 looks at how the Southern minority used the three-fifths clause, the Electoral College, and parity in the Senate to protect itself from “tyranny” of the Northern majority. Even with the three-fifths clause, the South could not overcome the North’s increasing population advantage. Nonetheless, the three-fifths clause’s “slave bonus” did limit the South’s losses in the House. While the South’s determination to have the number of slave states equal the number of free states ensured that the North would not have a majority. Both parity in the Senate and the three-fifths clause inflated the South’s representation in the Electoral College. Of these two proslavery constitutional provisions, parity in the Senate provided greater protection to the South. Northerners understood only too well the political benefits the three-fifths clause and parity in the Senate conferred upon the South. Antislavery advocates bristled at this, while conservatives believed it was the result of the Founders’ grand plan. Both Northerners and Southerners realized that the three-fifths clause and parity in the Senate added to the difficulty of securing congressional approval of an antislavery amendment. In 1850, the South lost parity in the Senate, never to regain it.
In an incisive analysis of over two dozen clauses as well as several 'unwritten' rules and practices, The Constitutional Origins of the American Civil War shows how the Constitution aggravated the sectional conflict over slavery to the point of civil war. Going beyond the fugitive slave clause, the three-fifths clause, and the international slave trade clause, Michael F. Conlin demonstrates that many more constitutional provisions and practices played a crucial role in the bloody conflict that claimed the lives of over 750,000 Americans. He also reveals that ordinary Americans in the mid-nineteenth century had a surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of the provisions and the methods of interpretation of the Constitution. Lastly, Conlin reminds us that many of the debates that divide Americans today were present in the 1850s: minority rights vs. majority rule, original intent vs. a living Constitution, state's rights vs. federal supremacy, judicial activism vs. legislative prerogative, secession vs. union, and counter-majoritarianism vs. democracy.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.