Fiona Mohamed Professor CallananDecember 4, 2014 While William Lloyd Garrison believes the Constitution is a pro-slavery document, Frederick Douglass and James Madison defend the Constitution as containing no pro-slavery provisions. In Federalist 54, Madison provides context and justification for various parts of the Constitution, the meanings of which are discussed later by Garrison and Douglass. Madison first addresses the 3/5 clause of the Constitution and states that the law treats slaves not as human beings, but “in some respects, as persons, and in other respects, as property” (Madison 334). More specifically, a slave is 3/5 of a person. He states that if slaves were to be counted as a full person, this would be biased in favor of the Southern states. The compromise, however, is that the Southern states would have a large number of representatives in the House of Representatives because the House's apportionment was based on population. . However, this would be unfair to the Northern states because they did not have large numbers of slaves who could increase their representation in Congress. Furthermore, counting slaves as a full person would illustrate an inequality in representation because representation would basically be a demonstration of how many slaves a state had, meaning representation would largely be based on how much money and wealth a state had compared to to another, which would be undemocratic and contrary to the principles of equality. Finally, counting a slave as 3/5 of a person would ensure that states would “feel as little prejudice as possible to increase or reduce” their population for the purpose of gaining more representation in congress or less taxes (Madison 338). Madison's discomfort with this compromise is refreshing. He recognizes that the Constitution considers slaves to be part property and part human beings, and, in explaining the reasoning behind the compromise, he never refers to himself as having such feelings. Instead, he argues that even though this document subjects millions of people to oppression and slavery on a daily basis, those who belong to the elite and own these slaves would not tolerate this injustice in the slightest if it were applied to themselves. Americans constantly talk about freedom and America as a fundamentally free and democratic nation, yet much of the population is actually oppressed and in slavery. He adds that there was no justification for adopting the Constitution, that “in the interests of achieving a political goal” and forming a functioning and effective government, this was not a sufficient reason to persecute millions of people of color nationwide (Garrison 1). While it took a lot of persuasion to get states to ratify this document, making concessions such as including a clause that the slave is only 3/5 of a person for apportionment purposes is not right. The urgency of ratification or the dire circumstances facing the nation did not justify the 3/5 provision. Furthermore, the end of the union is not validation for not ending slavery. Slavery should not be a topic to be tiptoed around: if the union's unity broke down because of slavery, then it would have been deserved and justified. Indeed, if tolerance of slavery remains