Dear Mr. Neal Boortz

Last week I read the opinion of Mr. Neal Boortz regarding ‘three-fifths’ in your Saturday Jan. 8, 2011 edition. Boortz is both right and wrong when he states “there was no mention of race and no suggestion that anyone counted as three-fifths of a human being” in the constitution. But given his pedantic nature and reference to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, one anticipates only a self-litigious churl would not have read or discussed the letters of the participants citing race and the slave trade in their positions.

Monday July 9, 1787 for example, New Jersey Attorney General William Patterson protested the rule of wealth and property since slaves were property fearing that this proposal by southern states would further encourage the slave trade giving the south more power. The slave trade was not in Europe but in Africa – a fact Mr. Boortz ignores. James Madison of Virginia blunted Patterson position and wrote in his letters specifically the phrases “white and black inhabitants.” Not to mention that Alexander Hamilton wrote specifically of the role “blacks” should play in representation.

It was thus written July 12, 1987 when a convention majority voted to sanction southern states noting “a black slave” as being both property and three-fifths of a “free white person.”

I also read the Times opinion article he referenced titled “the United States Consti…tion” Mr. Boortz I take it only reads the portions he likes.