A good read at RedState about how the 3/5ths Representation Compromise in the Constitution may have actually been quite unfavorable to the emancipation of the slaves than if there had been no representation for them at all…
The basic gist of is that the Slaver states wanted to pad up their Representative count in the House by counting all their slaves and seeking their representation (even if they couldn’t legally vote, being slaves) ; the Free states wanted not to count them at all, which would have drastically reduced the Slaver states’ representation in the House.
Not that this item was likely debated altruistically on the basis of the merits of ending slavery, but probably as a way of weighting the more thinly populated agrarian South (where one out of every three persons was a Negro slave) against the more densely populated proto-industrial North.
