Chapter 11 Part III

A Failed Homecoming

(Links to Part I and Part II)

“Pa, we’ve been through this before…” 

“Tell me, boy! Tell me of all the compromises we have given to the South!” 

“It does your health no good to remember…” 

“Damn you, boy! Obey me! Maybe you’ll learn yourself a thing or two!” 

****

Reeling from fury at the obstinacy, Jude stood up.

Martin could be ornery so how should one begin?

Magee, John L., Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana (Library of Congress) DLC

Start with the 3/5ths Compromise of 1787, which allowed Southern slaves to be counted as 3/5ths of a person for allocating congressional seats, despite that they couldn’t vote? The compromise bolstered the influence of the Southern congressional delegation in Washington, infuriating many people in the North who deemed it hypocritical, especially so soon after they’d fought the Revolutionary War on the principles of freedom. 

Telling himself he wanted to keep his father calmer, Jude instead leapfrogged thirty years to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, for it’d also set the tone for the slavery debates which marked his father’s generation.