Did Roger Sherman support the three fifths compromise?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the first two answers are based on very poor sources.

One source completely confuses the "Three-fifths Compromise" (over how the state's population would be CALCULATED, specifically how slaves would count in the census) with the "Great Compromise" (which provided that the national legislature have one house in which all states had the same representation, alongside the one, already agreed to, based on population.).

The other answer is based on someone's imaginative radio screenplay about the Constitutional Convention ("1787" NOT "1776"), which is entertaining but not based on a careful study of the actual evidence.

The truth is, almost everyone went along with the 3/5 number (based on the fact that Congress had already had a long debate about the matter and ended up with that number for some related purposes). The vote by STATE delegation was 9-2. Connecticut's delegation voted "aye". Now, since there were three CT delegates most of the time, it's possible one of these voted "no", but we have no record of such a thing. More importantly, Madison' extensive notes on the debates at the convention include no specific objection on this issue by Sherman or either of the other CT delegates.

Now this is NOT to say this delegation was "pro-slavery". For example Oliver Ellsworth of CT favored the three-fifths compromise and even opposed adding a Constitutional provision for the abolition of the (foreign) slave trade.

Yet Ellsworth OPPOSED slavery. The point for him, as for many other Northerners, was that without compromise on this issue they felt the South would not join them. Yet he believed that the North could esp. afford this concession BECAUSE he (again, as many others) expected that slavery would very soon die out, legislated out of existence by the Southern states themselves, just as had already been happening in the North. (They may have been encouraged in these hopes by the fact that, even as the Constitutional Convention was meeting, Congress was agreeing to the "Northwest Ordinance" which included a BAN on slavery in its provisions for the organization of that territory.)

Now we DO have some record in Madison's notes of a variety of remarks by Constitutional Convention delegates about debates concerning the slavery. More of this was about the slave trade than other issues, though a few Northerners complained about counting slaves at AT ALL. (Since the slaves had no right to vote, counting them fully or at 3/5 essentially gave EXTRA representation to slave OWNERS!)

For a collection of many of these remarks, esp. the very strong, eloquent speeches of Gouvernor Morris (of PA),
see the section "On Slavery, Taxation and Representation (the 3/5 clause)" on the following page -
http://userpages.umbc.edu/~bouton/History101/ConstitutionalConvention.htm


As for Sherman himself on the slave questions, here are a few things that may interest you:

From the article - "Connecticut in the Constitutional Convention" by Karl E. Valois

"On the issue of slavery, the Connecticut delegation remained fairly disinterested. There were only a few thousand slaves in the state in 1787, comprising less than two percent of the whole population; and, in 1784, a gradual emancipation law had been enacted without much debate. Personally, Sherman opposed slavery, albeit by no means was he emotional about the institution. On August 22, he stated that he "disapproved of the slave trade,"

**

"Hence, it was prudent, believed Sherman, to permit the southern states to continue their importation of slaves. Yet, he did not favor placing duties on slaves since this would imply that they were property. Meanwhile, the Connecticut delegation supported the three-fifths compromise in which five blacks would be equivalent to three whites for purposes of taxation and representation.
" - "Connecticut in the Constitutional Convention" by Karl E. Valois

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/cthistory/81.ch.01.x.html

"yet as the States were now possessed of the right to import slaves . . . and as it was expedient to have as few objections as possible to the proposed scheme of Government, he thought it best to leave the matter as we find it. He observed that the abolition of slavery seem to be going on in the U.S. and that the good sense of the several States would probably by degrees Complete it"
-- from Christopher Collier, *Roger Sherman’s Connecticut: Yankee Politics and the American Revolution*. Middletown: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1971, pp. 270-71

From Madison's notes -- on the August 8 debates:
"Mr. SHERMAN regarded the slave trade as iniquitous; but the point of representation having been settled after much difficulty & deliberation, he did not think himself bound to make opposition; especially as the present article as amended did not preclude any arrangement whatever on that point in another place of the Report."
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/debates/808.htm

Answer 2

Roger Sherman Slavery

Answer 3

I assume he did, since he was the one who formulated and proposed the three fifths compromise in 1787 to the Constitutional Convention held in Connecticut.