The question is what those older societies included in their censuses. The reason for the census and the definition of a person can vary wildly.
Remember that not that long ago at this scale, the USA considered slaves as 3/5 of a person when determining states' populations for representation and taxation purposes.
Historically, census was typically done for taxation purposes. Kids, homeless etc was just not that relevant since households were taxed. Slaves counted as property, not persons.
"For we got rid of things like having slaves be counted as 3/5 of a person of representation."
Just in case you didn't know, the "a slave is 3/5 of a person" that is so oft-decried today was an anti-slavery measure. For the purposes of Congressional representation, if a slave was counted as a full person, then the slave-owning states would get expanded numbers in Congress for all the non-voters being kept in slavery. Three-fifths, as opposed to full representation, at least kept them from gaining as much power as they would have otherwise. These things generally aren't as simple as one is often told.
The original purpose of the race box was to count slaves as 3/5 of a person (for congressional representation).
I don't think this is correct. While the vast majority of slaves were black, some were not, and some blacks were free. Can you cite a source justifying your claim about "the original purpose" of the census?
Yeah--- it's hard to read, but the census form on that page did indeed distinguish "free white males" from "free white females", "other free persons", and "slaves". If the sole purpose of the question were to count slaves and non-slaves for the purpose of the Constitutional enumeration, they could've just had two checkboxes.
It uses the term "free Persons" but the context is "their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons".
So "all other Persons", i.e. slaves, were counted.
This is so profoundly ignorant that I am surprised it continues to come up.
Under your premise you would have wanted all Slaves to be counted as whole persons. This is exactly what many slave owners wanted, they wanted to have the slaves counted as whole persons so their states would have more power.
The Abolitionists wanted the slaves not to be counted at all
3/5ths was a compromise and directly lead to the eventual abolishment of slavery completely.
For whatever it's worth, the 3/5ths number originally came from negotiations over modifying the original government documents of the united states: the articles of confederation where the question was whether or not slaves would count for the purposes of taxation. When the constitutional convention came around and the same debate showed up again, except now instead of taxation the question was representation, the proponents flipped positions but the 3/5ths number ended up getting picked up once again. Plus a ban on slave importation was set for 20 years in the future, which is a portion of the compromise often ignored in retrospect. (Mostly because it turned out not to be as effective as people hoped.)
The main thrust of your argument is absolutely correct though, in that the northern folks generally argued that slaves were treated as property (and so should be taxed as such) and the southern folks generally argued that they should count as people. (And should be represented as such.)
No one seemed to get to the idea that if you were going to count someone for the purposes of representation, maybe you also had to let them vote. That would have also brought up interesting questions around the disenfranchisement of various other classes of people, namely women, some white men without property and freed slaves right from the start. Instead we had to wait a long time to start solving those problems.
IT was apportioned on the number of slaves, but remember, slavers wanted the slaves counted as a full person and the free states didn't want the slaves counted at all. Decide which one is more true to 'representative democracy'
No it doesn’t. The condition of slavery wasn’t addressed by interpreting “people” to exclude enslaved people, additional words were added to distinguish enslaved people from free people. But free Black people, for example, were always included in the count of “free persons.” Other laws may have imposed limits. In 1789 women couldn’t vote and in 2021 children still can’t. But they were all included in the definition of “people.” Those other laws changed but the meaning of “people” didn’t.
I have no idea which is why I was trying to figure out if they count them or not.
They reckon there are approx 60,000 slaves in the US which would only be a tiny percentage of the 2 million which does not seem to jibe with what else I have read about.
Women, children, and slaves were all counted for purposes of representation (slaves at 3/5 --- which made the slave states weaker, not stronger) even though they couldn't vote.
Children can't vote to this day but still count in terms of representation in the House.
There never was a black people count for 3/5 of white people.
It was “states that have slavery get to count 3/5 of their enslaved population when determining the representation the free population gets in Congress (and, hence, also it's voting power in Presidential elections.)”
It's actually worse than black people counting as 3/5 of a white person; its more like slaveholders counting as 1 + (slaves held × 3) / 5 people.
That would be reasonable if the United States (note plural) were one entity.
It isn't.
The system is designed to prevent populous states from running roughshod over the smaller ones (and no, it didn't have anything to do with "slavery"... Virginia, a slave state, was also by far the most populous state. Under your proposed alternative system, it's likely that a) slaves would be counted fully[1] and b) the 1808 cutoff for importation of slaves would have been rescinded, or never enacted in the first place.
Under such a system, we likely would have had 4 or 5 civil wars by now, rather than just one.
[1] This point is also often misunderstood. It was the slave states who wanted the slaves counted fully, as that would have given them more representation in Congress. The free states didn't want the slaves counted at all. Phrasing it as "counting them as 3/5 of a person", as you often see, is simply ignorant. "So... you wanted them counted as a "full person"? You do understand that makes you pro-slavery, right?"
The original purpose of the race box was to count slaves as 3/5 of a person (for congressional representation). Since we no longer do this, why is the race box still there?
And observational data suggests that American society (and global society) has gotten better, not worse, at this judgment.
When we started this game, we had slaves, who were defined as three fifths of a human being for purposes of political representation of slave owners. Voting was restricted to white land-owning men. It's getting better.
The Constitution was, however, written with massive amounts of slaves being in the country in mind. And even they were counted as three fifths of a person. Should illegal immigrants be counted as less?
Motivated reasoning. In the 1790 US Census, the largest state, Virginia, was a slave state. 48.7 percent of the total free and enslaved population of the country in 1790 lived in slave states. What's more, out of the smallest 7 states by population, only one of them (Georgia) was a slave state.
The 2-person Senate and the 3/5ths compromise limited the power of SLAVE states to try to claim power in the Federal government by counting their slaves as population.
Remember that not that long ago at this scale, the USA considered slaves as 3/5 of a person when determining states' populations for representation and taxation purposes.
reply