on
afterward between the free-labor and slave-labor States. To such a
Northern union the border States, as they sloughed off the old system,
would have been naturally attracted; nor can there be a doubt that a
federal union so formed would ultimately have proved quite as strong,
quite as prosperous, quite as happy, and quite as respectable among the
nations, as one purchased by compromises with slavery, followed, as
those compromises were, by three quarters of a century of bitter
political strife ending in a civil war.

But the Northern members were no less ready to make compromises than
Southern members were to insist upon them, these no more understanding
what they conceded than those understood what they gained; for the
future was equally concealed from both. A committee reported that two
blacks should be rated as one free man. This was unsatisfactory. To some
it seemed too large, to others too small. Other ratios, therefore, were
proposed,--three to one, three to two, four to one, and four to three.
Mr. Madison at last, "in order," as he said, "to give a proof of the
sincerity of his professions of liberality,"--and doubtless he meant to
be liberal,--proposed "that slaves should be rated as five to three."
His motion was adopted, but afterward reconsidered. Four days
later--April 1st--Mr. Hamilton renewed the proposition, and it was
carried, Madison says, "without opposition."[6] The law on this point
was the precedent for the mischievous three fifths rule of the
Constitution adopted four years later.

Youth finally overtook the young man during the last winter of his term
in Congress, for he fell in love. But it was an unfortunate experience,
and the outcome of it doubtless gave a more sombre hue than ever to his
life. His choice was not a wise one. Probably Mr. Madison seemed a much
older man than he really was at that period of his life, and to a young
girl may have appeared really advanced in years. At any rate, it was his
unhappy fate to be attached to a young lady of more than usual beauty
and of irrepressible vivacity,--Miss Catherine Floyd, a daughter of
General William Floyd of Long Island, N. Y., who was one of the signers
of the Declaration of Independence, and who was a delegate to Congress
from 1774 to 1783. Miss Catherine's sixteenth birthday was in April of
the latter year; Madison was double her age, as his thirty-second
birthday was a month earlier. His suit, however, was accepted, and they
became