3/5 Compromise

What is the 3/5 Compromise? At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, there was a major disagreement between the northern states and the southern states over whether to count slaves as a person or not as a person for purposes of representation. A compromise was struck that slaves were equal to 3/5 of a person. Let’s dissect the compromise even further…

Understanding the Background In 1787, America was in the progress of creating a government. Just 5 years earlier they had won the Revolutionary War and implemented the Articles of Confederation. We learned that the Articles of Confederation has failed miserably. It was time for a restart but there was tension between the northern and southern states.

Northern States The northern states included: Connecticut Massachusetts New Jersey New York Pennsylvania Rhode Island New Hampshire The northern states did not have slavery dominating their society. The north relied upon a workforce where people worked and got paid.

Southern States The southern states included: Delaware Maryland Virginia North Carolina South Carolina Georgia The southern states relied heavily upon a slave workforce in the fields to help harvest crops.

Constitution Enter the Constitution. The Constitutional Convention was held in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia in order to create a better form of government. The only problem was that there was tension between the north and the south states. We will see that the beginnings of the Civil War tensions start as early as the Constitutional Convention, almost 100 years prior to the Civil War!

What was the Tension? The Constitutional Convention was debating back and forth on how to tackle the issue of representation and taxation in regards to slavery.

Representation Representation is defined as someone who has a voice for the people. The more population a state has, the more representation a state has thus giving that state more say in how the government should be run. Let’s say there is a vote on what to have for lunch. Pizza or burgers. You want pizza. So, in order for you to get pizza, you need the majority of people voting for pizza.

Representation The southern states had a lot of slaves. Some states had more slaves then there were citizens. The south wanted to count a slave for representation purposes in order to have a bigger voice in the government. The northern states disagreed and said that slaves should not count for representation since they did not count as citizens. The south fought back saying that if slaves did not count for representation purposes then they would not have a voice in the government. At the time in our country, 1 representative was the voice for 30,000 people. So for every 30,000 people, there was 1 representative for that state. The higher the number of people means the more representatives which means the state has bigger voice in how the government runs. More control for a state means they get what they want.

Taxation Taxation is a tax forced on a person. The north wanted to count all slaves for the purpose of taxes. The south did not want to count any slaves for the purpose of taxes.

So What Did They Do? No one would budge on the representation and taxation issue so a compromise had to be done. A compromise is a deal made in the middle that makes both sides of an issue happy.

The Three-Fifths Compromise The Constitutional Convention reached an agreement that slaves would count as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of determining representation. For example, 100 slaves would be equivalent to 60 people. The delegates did not want to use the word "slave" in the document, they stated that "free persons" would count as one and "non-free persons" would count as three-fifths of a person.

Other Compromises The Constitutional Convention also agreed that the issue of slavery could not be debated for 20 years. The reason this compromise was made was because the south feared that the north would try and limit slavery through lawmaking. Slavery could not be discussed or debated until 1807, 20 years after 1787.

Conclusion The Three-Fifths Compromise remained in effect until the end of the Civil War. After the conclusion of the war, the 13th Amendment was passed that made all former slaves citizens, and therefore they were counted as full citizens for the purpose of representation. We will discuss the 13th amendment in a future lesson.