At issue was the advantage Jefferson and his fellow Southerners had in national elections because of the three-fifths clause, the constitutional provision that counted a slave as three-fifths of a person to establish the number of congressmen and presidential electors allocated to each state.31 When Jefferson went on to win the presidency four years later, his Federalist critics would disparage him as the “Negro President” because of his dependence on the three-fifths clause. The battles over slavery were thus rooted not only in the debate over the morality of abolition but in the practical
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