Existing comment:
Animals Are People, Too?
These petitioners ironically highlighted the hypocrisy behind Southern states' defense of the Three-Fifths Clause in the Constitution: they claimed that slaves are property, but also counted them as three-fifths of a person regarding representation in Congress. The petitioners argued that animals in free states be counted as persons with respect to congressional apportionment, just as slaves are in the South.
Petition for a constitutional amendment that representation in Congress be apportioned by including the animal property of the free states as well as the slave property of the slave-holding states, circa 1844, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives |