Genuine Compromise and the Domino Effect: Inaction is Not an Option

Not often do Americans mark April 18, 1783 on their calendars as a day of special remembrance. Yet, it is a memorable date. On this day 230 years ago, James Madison introduced an amendment to the Articles of Confederation – the Federal Ratio, popularly termed the 3/5 Compromise. The compromise aimed to apportion the number of slave inhabitants at a 5 to 3 ratio for determining a state’s taxation allotment to the general government. The total number of slaves counted 3/5 of their actual number. The amendment failed, but four years later Roger Sherman and James Wilson would reintroduce the concept to the Constitutional  Convention.

James Wilson, had he not died in 1798, might well be a name revered as highly as that of Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin. In my estimation, he was the most erudite of the Founding Fathers, among the most visionary, but also one of the more conciliatory. In other words, at times he gave in to principles he knew were just bad, but forfeited his better judgment due to dire conditions. On April 18, 1783 he held firm on one principle: that individual states ought not cede territory to the United States but that the United States ought to cede territory to the individual states. The suggestion and the implications therein generated no inconsiderable amount of apoplexy in the Assembly, and Wilson was called to order. On the 5 to 3 apportionment, congressional notes record: “He said he would sacrifice his opinion to this compromise.”

Just to give this date a little more context, Congress only a week earlier declared “cessation of arms” against Great Britain, and just 3 days prior approved the Treaty of Paris. The question of taxation under discussion relative to the 3/5 compromise meant discharging some of the war debt. The combined sum to be collected from all the states being a whopping one million dollars. The general government couldn’t pay its debts without sufficient revenue, revenue owed by the states and for which the states refused to comply. They had a revenue crisis. That revenue crisis compounded by war profiteering reached proportions so egregious that dissolution of the Union was imminent by 1787. Fast forward to the Philadelphia Convention when Wilson and Sherman reintroduce the 3/5 Compromise at another crisis point of imminent dissolution.

Roger Sherman was no Wilson, but he was no slouch nor insignificant contributor to American’s founding. During the Philadelphia Convention, he co-authored the Connecticut Compromise which, when modified by Benjamin Franklin, prevented the smaller and mostly Northern states from seceding while the primary architecture of the Constitution was under construction. The Convention, on the brink of collapse with dissolution again imminent, moved forward. That advance led directly to revival of the 3/5 Compromise. Which led to another compromise offered in yet another deadlocked moment – offered by James Wilson – the electoral college.

The sticking point  here was how to elect the President. Wilson himself advocated for direct election by the people. He opposed the alternative proposal of legislative appointment. Madison and Gouvernor Morris also favored direct election. Morris eloquently argued that the National Executive was to be “the guardian of the people” and should therefore be elected by the people. Wilson’s proposal for the electoral college allowed for an intervening system where the people elected the electors for each state who would then elect the President.

And here’s the interesting thing about compromise. It isn’t often what it seems. In 1783, most of the South opposed the 3/5 Compromise. In 1787, they embraced it. Under the Articles of Confederation the 3/5 Compromise meant a higher tax levy on slave states. But under the new Constitution, it granted them a disproportionately higher number of representatives in the first legislative branch – the House. That, in turn, allowed the South disproportionate domination of national politics. The 3/5 Compromise proved a convenient flip. A concept so reviled under the Articles of Confederation became a banner under which to rally. That rallying combined with other bad compromises eventually led to the Civil War. The wide angle: Compromise facilitated the ultimate inaction – perpetuating the institution of slavery.

The significance of this April 18th Anniversary is the potential domino effect carried in bad compromise, that cacophony of causally linked, entrenched disasters. Plenty of entrenched, unending crises resulting from bad compromise loom before us, and at every level of government: From the sequester to chained CPI to sensible gun control to restructuring county government. Though ultimately calamitous, the 3/5 Compromise had a number of things going for it that our own divisive controversies do not: commitment, purpose, and honor. Madison, Wilson, and Sherman proposed the Federal Ratio as genuine compromise. None acted out of regional or special interest. All sacrificed some component of importance in order to accept it. The same cannot be said of our great compromisers today. No honor, purpose, or commitment can be found in contemporary compromises. But today’s compromises are no less shortsighted and potentially calamitous, wrongly grounded, and leading toward strife and suffering. More dominoes. It needn’t be so. As significant, while we should try to avoid those dominoes with foresight, we shouldn’t fear them either by refusing to act.

Today compromise is disingenuous. Today compromise is more often cynical and opportunist at worst. Insincere cozenage at best. That process must end. Then there’s that special species of compromise – no compromise – which allows an immoral and untenable element to continue, to fester and to rot. We saw that kind of corrosive species of compromise yesterday when Conservatives on both sides of the aisle sabotaged tepid gun legislation and filibustered it out of existence. When sensible gun legislation gets watered down until it is barely useful but can’t pass the senate, it’s a herald for sweeping change in gun control laws. It’s time “we the people” demand wisdom, foresight, and stability from our elected officials. Insist on nothing less than the government every citizen deserves and is currently deprived. It’s time for government to do what Gouvenor Morris argued, be “the guardian of the people” by protecting the people from a society unjustly plagued by gun violence.

In 1787, “doing nothing” wasn’t an option because the people quite literally wouldn’t allow further inaction. Which is why despite the many disagreements among delegates at the Pennsylvania Convention, every so often in the debate notes we find the abbreviation “nem. con.” It stands for nemine contradicente. It means “We are without dissent.”

The long view, of course, bodes ill for irrationality. History hath shown protracted obstinancy never triumphs. Not only does it lose, it loses permanently. Background checks are the 3/5 Compromise of gun control. In the end, “sensible gun legislation” will be inconsequential, because in the end an armed citizenry will be imponderable, unthinkable, a relic of the coarse and distant past.