The infamous three fifths compromise of the US Constitution required that both representatives and direct taxes be apportioned by counting the whole number of free persons, and 3/5 of all other persons.
But while the representation part of that certainly hurt states with large slave populations, the direct taxes part may not have helped, if Congress didn't in fact levy direct taxes.
My understanding is that most Federal taxes back then were tariffs and exice taxes, such as the ones which sparked the Whiskey Rebellion. Were these subject to the 3/5 compromise? Were there other large direct taxes which were subject to it but don't get talked about much? Did the compromise blow up in the faces of slave states a bit? Or am I missing something else entirely?
The 3/5 compromise did give the southern states more representatives in the House of Representatives than they would have without it.
the part of the question that I wanted to tag on is there is clearly a reference to direct taxes, Jefferson is noted for saying that it wasn't fair for the south to be taxed on free population plus property while the north to be only taxed on the basis of free population.
I don't recall any definition of what this direct tax was, I similarly only recall from school tariffs and excise taxes both of which relate to transaction based commercial activity taxes.
So my question here is what was this scheme of direct taxes, how did it work and where did it go?